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COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 




Editiok de Taxe. 

Five Hundred and Eight copies printed 
for subscribers. 

This is Xc (AHfcrOc/ ^ftTUi 

J. B. Lippixcoir Company. 





/ COLONIAL k 

i DAYS <^ DAMES \ 

i '"[ i 

A ^nncjlollin^s worth "^ 

V ' Pf^/?arton * 

ii. With Illustrations by E.S.HoIIoway 



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J% iJ.B.LlPPINCdTTC?; ^ 



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Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

J. B. LippiNcoTT Company. 



VV i'^"^ 



Printed by J B Lippincott Company, PHiiADt lphi*, U.S.A. 



^ 



TO THE MEMORY OF AN HONORED COLONIAL 
DAME OF TO-DAY, 

DEBORAH BROWN COLEMAN, 

THIS BRIEF RECORD OF 
COLONIAL LIFE 

IS 

3iffectfanot«Iii jQedtcatcft. 



I* 




PREFACE. 

While men still recall the rustic pleas- 
ures of an old country seat in New York 
whose site is now the heart of the great 
metropolis, or remember forest trees sur- 
rounding a house at the corner of Twelfth 
and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia, or 
tell of a boyhood spent in the pretty 
country town of Boston where stage- 
coaches clattered in from the rural dis- 
tricts, it seems time to collect in perma- 
nent form memorials of a past that cannot 
much longer be held in the memory of the 
living. By talking with men and women 
who lived in the first quarter of this cen- 
tury, we not only learn how our great 
cities appeared before the advent of the 
railroad, the steamboat, and the telegraph, 
but also, reaching back through their 

7 



8 PREFACE. 

family traditions, are placed in touch with 
the scenes of the Revolution and, even 
further back, with those of Colonial days. 
To give glimpses of social and domestic 
life North and South, gathered from such 
recollections and from diaries and letters, 
rather than to present a full or connected 
story of Colonial times, have these pages 
been written. For manuscripts, pictures, 
and data placed at my disposal, I take 
pleasure in making grateful acknowledg- 
ment to Mr. Justin Winsor, of Cambridge, 
to General Loring and Mr. Henry Ernest 
Woods, of Boston, to Mr. Matthew Clark- 
son, of New York, to Miss Adelaide L. 
Fries, of Salem, North Carolina, and to 
Dr. Charles J. Stille, Mr. David Lewis, 
Mr. Edward Shippen, Dr. Charles Cad- 
walader, Mr. F, J. Dreer, Mrs, OHver 
Hopkinson, and Miss Marion Wetherill, 
of Philadelphia. 

A. H. W. 

November, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



page; 

COLONIAL DAYS II 

WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 6l 

A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES 99 

COLONIAL DAMES I25 

OLD LANDMARKS 153 

WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS 1 95 

LEGEND AND ROMANCE 2I9 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGB 

GuNSTON Hall, Virginia, once the residence of 
George Mason, built about 1729. 

From photograph taken for this -work, October, 
i8q4 Frontispiece. 



Mrs. Isaac Norris (Mary Lloyd). 

From portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, original in 
possession of Mr. A. Sydney Logan, of Phila. . . 25 



Christ Church, North Second Street, Philadel- 
phia. 

Front vietu of iitterior photographed in i8()3 . . . . 29 



Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Philadelphia. 

Front photograph taken for this work, October, i8g4 3^ 



The Copley Family. 

Painted by John S. Copley, from original in Boston 
Museum of Art, owned by Mr. Charles Amory, 
of Boston 91 



XU LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

FAGB 

Nellie Custis (Mrs. Lawrence Lewis). 

Front miniature by Thomas Sully, in possession of 
Mr. Edward Shippen, of Philadelphia 94 



Mrs. James Tilghman (Anne Francis), 

From portrait in possession of Mr. F. C. Golds- 
borough," Ellenborough" Maryland \\X 



Mrs. Samuel Alleyne Otis (Elizabeth Gray). 

From portrait by John S. Copley, originally full 
length, as a shepherdess with a crook, holding a 
lamb by a blue ribbon. Owned by Mr. Harrison 
Gray Otis, of Boston 14* 



Mrs. John Morgan (Mary Hopkinson). 

From portrait by Benjamin West, in possession of 
the Coale family, of Baltimore 1 46 



House of Colonel Roger Morris, afterwards 
known as Jumel House, on Harlem River, New 
York. 

From a recent photograph 164 



Robert R. Livingston, first Chancellor of the 
State of New York. 

From portrait in Independence Hall, Philadelphia 1 7 * 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Xlll 

PAGB 

British Grenadier. 

From life-size figure standing in the Jiall of VVister 
Homestead, residence of Mr. Otarles J. Wister, 
Germantown, Philadelphia 179 



Mrs. Samuel Blodget (Rebecca Smith). 

From unfinished head by Gilbert Stuart, in Acad- 
emy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 187 



Mrs. William Lewis (Frances Esmonde, of 
Huntingdon Castle, Ireland). 

Frtnn tniniature in possession of Miss Frances 
Donnel, of Sunbury, Pennsylvania I<59 



Lady Pepperell and her sister Miss Royal 
(daughters of Isaac Royal, of Medford, Massa- 
chusetts). 

From early painting of John S. Copley, in posses- 
sion of the Misses Snow, of Jamaica Plain, Mass. 204 



Mrs. Peter Augustus Jay (Mary Rutherfurd 
Clarkson). 

From original in possession of Mr. Matthew Clark- 
son, of New York 210 



Flora Macdonald. 

From painting copied from London portrait ofij^b, 
in possession of Miss Alice Campbell, of Fayette- 
ville. North Carolina 226 




COLONIAL DAYS. 



"I SHALL call that my country where 
I may most glorify God and enjoy the 
presence of my dearest friends," wrote 
Governor Winthrop from Massachusetts 
to his absent wife; while the Rev. Francis 
Higginson, stronger in his expressions of 
renunciation for himself and others, has 
left the following testimony in his diary : 
" When we are in our graves, it will be 
all one whether we have lived in plenty 
or penury, whether we have dyed in a 
bed of downe or lockes of straw. Onely 



12 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

this is the advantage of the meane con- 
dition, that it is a more freedom to dye. 
And the lesse comfort any have in the 
things of this world, the more Hberty they 
have to lay up treasure in heaven." 

Although many of the Colonists came 
to the shores of the New World with such 
words upon their lips, and, we may believe, 
with such sentiments in their minds, it was 
not long before sturdy Anglo-Saxon enter- 
prise and English love of home comfort 
led them to make the wilderness, if not to 
blossom like the rose of the Scriptures, at 
least to take upon it something approach- 
ing civilization. 

No stronger contrast is to be found in 
Colonial history than the sad story of the 
earliest Virginia settlements, wiped out one 
after the other by starvation and the hos- 
tility of the natives, with that of the Massa- 
chusetts Colonists, clinging with English 
tenacity to their rock-bound coast, defying 
danger, cold, and hunger, guarding their 
scant stores, restraining their appetites, — 
planting the first corn that fell in their 
way, showing their wisdom in that dark 



CXaXXSlAL DAYS. 1 3 

day by provkHi ^ for a still darker cr.e. — 
wafiifiil alert, devout, trustfug: in ike pro- 
tectiofi of an imsffn Father, a bcxh* cf 
deephr rd%ioas men and wom^i, evsi if 
in the expose of titeir feidi they were often 
harder than the stones with wiiich tiiey 
ground tiieir com. 

Hie esquresaons <^ the New En^and 
settios often seem to us too ^xritoaltobe 
natural in an hoar when tenqxxal needs 
pressed sctfi^ Topon them. >-et the promise 
wiudi they rtrimed for thems^res — "^ Seek 
ye first the kii^ndom c^ God, and his right- 
eousness; and all these things shall be 
added unto you" — was destined to be ful- 
nlled. if not to them, to their children in 
the next generation, in greater comfort of 
If^Tiig;, in peace and prosperity, in manu- 
^ctures and coounerce. Dwdhng-, meet- 
ing-, and schccl-hottses sfvai^ up all over 
the e2^:e-r ; : n <^the Colony, ari slx- 
: ' :tlecoicc-r ::" 7 .'.- 

. ?ne the iJ:; -r- ;-' 



14 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

the first building raised at Han-ard, al- 
though there were those who pronounced 
it *' too gorgeous for the wilderness." 

In glancing o\'^r the Colonies. North and 
South, there seems to have been no life 
more delightful than that of Marj-land and 
Mrginia, Handsome, spadous mansions. 
a fertile soil, genial climate, fine horses. 
and retinues of serv^ants conspired to give 
the home life of the Southern planter many 
of the characteristics of English countr\- 
li\-ing. Yet with all its ad^-antages a dis- 
couraging record is that of the first efforts 
to colonize \'irginia. John Ouincy Adams 
said, in an oration delivered early in this 
century-, that the final success of theMrginia 
settlements was largely due to the example 
of Massachusetts. As these settlements 
were started long before that of Ph-mouth, 
and as the places of those who failed were 
speedily filled by others, ready and willing 
to tr\- the hazardous experiment it seems 
as if the ultimate triumph of Mrginia col- 
onization might be fairly attributed to the 
courage and perseverance of the settlers 
themselves. When men equal to the un- 



COLOXIAL DAYS. 1$ 

dertaking wa% sent o\'er, the setdement 
<^ tbe Colpny became an assured spccess, 
def^'te restilence. stan-ation, and the coo- 
5: : ^"ing of the borders by hostile 
I _ - Go\-emor Dudley* 's pathetic let- 
:: :: ^.e Countess erf" Lincohi, writtoi 
r .--iter he came to Salem, finds a par- 
a ; expressions of Lord Dela\\-are, 

\s^. --.-^. ^ Loat if the *' much cold comfort," 
in the way of bad news of the settlements, 
that mei. him upon his arrival in 1610 had 
not beai accompanied by tidings of the 
cominsT o\-er of & Tliomas Gates, "it 
hai zr.r.e sufficient to have broke my 
hr :: 

T :; -:;:-■ :f :uir z;^ \:5 and es:ai>- 
lif :;_: : -:.?;.- :5 su: ;.- the same 

all :.-:"- :.;; ::;.r: 1:. 1 -:\:\^ .\ .\i:^ New 



c; ^ - ... ;. - ...„....- . .- ..:..: . . .:- 
hi. laem and tbe sen r:~ ::: .-...:;. 

jreirs. \Veread of a ^^r5 CI : i : 
came to Philaddph:2 .-: . .r r^f: .;.i._- 
ha\'ing lost her ^ on siupboard 

[probabh - i who was 

' kft with e^^-^: : :_.-._._;„. Her com- 



1 6 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

panions prepared her the usual settlement 
in a cave on the river-bank. So great was 
the sympathy felt for this lady that even 
the Indians brought her supplies and gifts, 
and later a Friend [meaning a Quaker] 
built a house and gave her a share of it." 
Yet how few complaints we find ! how sim- 
ply the record reads ! The chronicler of the 
time dwells more upon the climate, pro- 
ductions of the country, characteristics of 
the natives, and improvements made up to 
1696, which included "several good schools 
for the teaching of youth," than upon the 
struggles and privations of the settlers. So 
much was this the case, that of the early 
voyages to Pennsylvania, when small-pox 
often ravaged the ship's company, we 
find almost no detailed account. Some- 
times the fact is mentioned in a letter to a 
friend, as when James Claypoole writes to 
Robert Turner that he hears that thirty- 
one persons have died of small-pox in 
William Penn's ship, the Welcome. There 
were only one hundred passengers in all. 
Elsewhere, Townsend and Story tell us 
that the Proprietary himself assisted good 



COLONIAL DAYS. 1 7 

Dr. Thomas Wynne in the care of the sick 
and dying. 

As an illustration of the primitiveness 
of this early living, we find the following 
story of little Rebecca Coleman, who came 
over with the first Pennsylvania settlers. 
At the door of her cave, when one day sit- 
ting there eating her milk porridge, she was 
heard to say again and again, " Now thee 
shan't," and again, " Keep to thy part." 
Upon investigation it was discovered that 
the child's " thees" and " thous" were ad- 
dressed to a snake with which, in the most 
confiding manner, and with strict regard to 
justice, she was sharing her supper of milk 
porridge from a bowl placed upon the 
ground. " Happy simplicity and peaceful- 
ness !" adds the chronicler, for these were 
days when no tale was complete without 
its moral, " reminding one strongly of the 
Bible promise, when the weaned child 
should put its hand on the cockatrice's 
den." The promise was literally fulfilled 
in the case of little Rebecca Coleman, as 
she suffered no injury, and, having survived 
the perils of the early settlement, lived 



1 8 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

to within a few years of the Revolution. 
Great changes was she destined to witness 
in her life of ninety-two years ! Philadel- 
phia, then a high river-bank, with a dense 
forest back of it, was soon to be what 
Gabriel Thomas found it, a " noble and 
beautiful city," containing " a number of 
houses, all inhabited, and most of them 
stately and of brick, generally three stories 
high, after the mode of London." This in 
1696, while in 1744, William Black wrote 
that Philadelphia far exceeded all descrip- 
tions he had heard of it. He was specially 
impressed by the number of privateers in 
the harbor, " the Considerable Trafifick, in 
shipping and unshipping of Goods, mostly 
American Produce," and the comfort and 
even luxury in which dwelt Mr. Andrew 
Hamilton, Secretary Peters, Mr. Thomas 
Lawrence, and others who entertained 
him. 

Mr. Black grows quite enthusiastic over 
the markets of Philadelphia, from which, 
he says, " You may be Supply'd with every 
Necessary for the Support of Life thro'ut 
the whole year, both Extraordinary Good 



COLONIAL DAYS. I9 

and reasonably Cheap, and it is allow'd by- 
Foreigners to be the best of its bigness in 
the known World, and undoubtedly the 
largest in America ; I got to the place by 
7 ; and had no small satisfaction in seeing 
the pretty Creatures, the Young Ladies, 
traversing the place from Stall to Stall, 
where they could make the best Market, 
some with their Maid behind them with a 
Basket to carry home the Purchase, Others 
that were designed to buy but trifles, as a 
little fresh Butter, a Dish of Green Peas, or 
the Hke, had Good Nature and Humility 
enough to be their own Porter." This pleas- 
ing picture, even after making some allow- 
ance for the floridness of Mr. Black's style, 
suggests comfort and plenty sufficient to 
present a strong contrast to the minds of 
those who, Hke Rebecca Coleman, were 
able to recall the hardships of the first set- 
tlement of Pennsylvania; while in New 
England the " city-like town of Boston 
with its beautiful and large buildings," de- 
scribed by a traveller in 1649, marked rapid 
progress from the little companies at Salem 
and Charlestown drawing close together 



20 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

for safety upon the three hills of Shaw- 
mut. 

The strongest reason for the final tri- 
umph over many and great obstacles in the 
early settlement is doubtless to be found 
in the character of the immigrants. Mr. 
Hollister, in his " History of Connecticut," 
after stating that many of those who came 
to New England were from the humbler 
walks of life, says, " The planters, the sub- 
stantial landholders, who began to plant 
those ' three vines in the wilderness,' sprung 
from the better classes, and a large propor- 
tion of them from the landed gentry of 
England. This fact is proved not only by 
tracing individual families, but by the very 
names that those founders of our republic 
bore." 

True as this was of New England, 
with its Winthrops, Saltonstalls, Endi- 
cotts, Winslows, Bradfords, Pynchons, and 
Wentworths, it was equally the case in the 
Middle and Southern Colonies, to which 
early came the Livingstons, Schuylers, 
Crugers, De Peysters, De Lanceys, Mont- 
gomerys, Peningtons, Lloyds, Rodneys, 



COLONIAL DAYS. 21 

Calverts, Francises, Ravenels, Pringles, 
and Izards. If, as has often been said, 
and with some truth, Virginia was a 
Botany Bay for English criminals, it is 
only fair to acknowledge that many of 
these were political offenders, and as^ 
likely to be in the right as their accusers. \ 
England also sent to this Colony the' 
Washingtons, Fairfaxes, Byrds, Harri- 
sons, Spotswoods, Culpepers, Skipwiths, 
Pages, and Randolphs. 

One needs only to glance over these 
names to realize that they did not, as a 
rule, belong to irresponsible adventurers, 
although of such there were some in all 
the Colonies. 

Men who came from families of good 
position on the other side of the water felt 
it no dishonor to put their hands to 
any honest toil that had for its object 
the work of home-making and nation- 
building. Hence among the first settlers 
of Pennsylvania we find many good Eng- 
lish names connected with the trades of 
tailor, hatter, carpenter, and the like, while 
from early New England records we learn 



22 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

that Roger Wolcott, a Colonial governor 
and a man of letters, worked in the field ; 
that Governor Leete kept a store ; while 
John Dunton, when he came to Boston in 
1696, rejoiced to find Mr. Samuel Shrimp- 
ton's "stately house there, with a Brass 
Kettle atop, to show his Father was not 
ashamed of his Original." 

Later, when the idea of good livings to 
be made in a country where land was to 
be had for the asking and where fortunes 
might be gained through trade with the 
Indies, prevailed through Great Britain and 
the Continent, a different class of people 
came to America. Many of these were 
skilled workers, thrifty in their habits, 
good, law-abiding citizens, like the Scotch 
and Irish from Ulster and the Germans 
who settled Germantown and came in 
such numbers to other portions of Penn- 
sylvania. 

In the Southern Colonies there seem to 
have been fewer men of a practical stamp 
in the earliest immigrations ; hence from 
Virginia, John Smith, and later Lord Dela- 
ware, wrote home that they could not set- 



COLONIAL DAYS. 23 

tie the Colony without " men of quality, 
and painstaking men of arts and practices, 
chosen out and sent into the business." 
This was William Penn's principle, so 
strongly emphasized in the settlement of 
Pennsylvania, that the learning of a trade 
was the fittest equipment for colonization, 
Mr. Douglas Campbell has recounted the 
debt that the New England settlers owe to 
their temporary residence among the thrifty 
Hollanders, in legislation as well as in 
manufactures, commerce, and other arts of 
life. Pennsylvania also owes something to 
the Dutch, as it is safe to believe that the 
founder of the Province derived many of 
the practical elements in his well-balanced 
character from his Dutch mother, Margaret 
Jasper. 

Simplicity of manners prevailed for many 
years from necessity, but the settlers of 
Pennsylvania surrounded themselves with 
whatever comforts and conveniences they 
could command. An extensive commerce 
was soon established with the Indies and 
the ports of Southern Europe, while the 
Germans and the Scotch - Irish added 



24 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

much to the industrial prosperity of the 
Province.* 

Substantial and convenient houses were 
soon built, among these Robert Turner's 
" great and famous house," so often spoken 
of, and the Proprietary's house in Letitia 
Court, for which, as well as for the con- 
struction of his " Pennsbury Palace," the 
finer part of the framework was sent over 
from England. The ancient doorway of 
the latter house bore the cheerful and in- 
viting ornament of a vine and cluster of 
grapes. 

The first Edward Shippen is said to have 
" surpassed his contemporaries in the style 
and grandeur of his edifice and appurte- 
nances for crossing the water/' which latter 
phrase, we conclude, refers to boats used 
for business or pleasure, as Mr. Shippen's 
grounds extended to Dock Creek. This 

* German linen, camlets, and serges were made in 
Germantown as early as 1696, and Judge Samuel W. 
Pennypacker says that to the Germans is due the honor 
of establishing the first paper-mill in America, in 1690, 
and of printing the Bible in their own tongue nearly 
forty years before it was printed in English. 



COLONIAL DAYS. 25 

house on South Second Street, afterwards 
called the Governor's House, had an or- 
chard and fine garden around it, which, 
says the admiring chronicler, "equalizes 
any I have e\'er seen, having a very famous 
and pleasant summer-house erected in the 
middle of his garden, abounding with 
tulips, pinks, carnations, roses and lilies, 
not to mention those that grew wild in the 
fields, and also a fine lawn upon which 
reposed his herd of tranquil deer." 

If the Friend modestly, or with an affec- 
tation of modesty, called his coach " a con- 
venience." it was none the less a coach. 
The Proprietary early drove his coach in 
Philadelphia, and from thence to Penns- 
bury, and Isaac Norris, the son of an Eng- 
lish merchant who had settled in Jamaica, 
sent to England for a coach, and, although 
a strict Quaker, did not scruple to have 
the three falcons' heads of the family shield 
emblazoned upon its side. The Norrises 
also had their portraits painted while 
in London, which was a custom objected 
to later by Quakers as savoring of the 
world. In her picture by Kneller, Mrs. 



26 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Isaac Norris appears as one of the most 
beautiful women of her time, nor is her 
costume strictly Friendly, the prevailing 
colors being red and green, the lovely hair 
rolled back from the forehead and worn 
■without a cap. 

There was no persecution for religion in 
Pennsylvania ; but there was less friendli- 
ness between the Quakers and the Church 
people, as the latter came to have more 
authority and influence in the government. 
Such spicy expletives as the " Hot Church 
Party," and " Colonel Quarr}''s Packed 
Vestr}^," we find in the mouths of good 
Friends of the day, while William Penn, in 
a letter to James Logan, says that Gov- 
ernor Gookin has presented Parson Evans* 
^\^th " two as gaudy and costly Common 
Prayer Books as the Queen has in her 
chapel, and intends as fine a Communion 
table, both of which charm the baby in 
the Bishop of London, as well as Parson 
Evans." 

* This was the Rev. Evan Evans, rector of Christ 
Church parish in 17 19. 



COLONIAL DAYS. 27 

Something like uniformity of thought 
and purpose prevailed in Colonial New 
England, with the exception of Rhode 
Island, which, like the Provinces of Penn- 
sylvania and Maryland, early became a 
refuge for the disaffected from the neigh- 
boring settlements, naturally inducing a 
more restless religious life and a larger 
religious toleration. Mr. Lodge attributes 
the strong and sustained individuality of 
the New England people not simply to 
their Puritanism, but also to the fact that 
they were of English strain, with only 
slight admixture from other nationalities. 
" Race, language, religious belief, manners, 
customs, and habits of mind and thought 
were," he says, " the same irom the forests 
of Maine to the shores of Long Island 
Sound. . . . They were all pure English- 
men, the purest part of the race perhaps, for 
during a century and a half [in 1765] they 
had lived in a New World, and received 
no fresh infusion of blood from any race 
but their own." 

The Quaker who came to Pennsylvania 
was quite as single-minded as the Puritan 



28 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

of New England, and as sincere and earnest 
in following the guidance of that " inner 
light" which stood with him for duty, con- 
science, all that belongs to the moral and 
spiritual development of man, as was his 
New England brother in carrying out the 
rules and ordinances of the religious body 
to which he belonged. While the New 
England Colonies were developing along 
their own lines, with scant charity for those 
whose ideas ran in other channels, Penn- 
sylvania, from her position and charter, 
became the home not only of the English 
and the Welsh Quaker, who came to it as 
to his birthright of freedom, religious and 
civil, but of the English Churchman, with 
his more conservative notions ; of the 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, as firmly estab- 
lished in his spiritual convictions as the 
Puritan, although less favorably placed by 
Providence for the direction of his neigh- 
bor's conscience ; of the Roman CathoHc ; 
of the German and Swedish Lutheran ; 
and of many less distinct subdivisions of 
Protestantism. Fourteen years after the 
settlement of Pennsylvania, Gabriel Thomas 



COLONIAL DAYS. 29 

speaks of numerous places of worship in 
Philadelphia, — of one Anabaptist, one 
Swedish Lutheran, one Presbyterian, two 
Quaker meeting-houses, and of a fine church 
belonging to the Church of England people. 
This was Christ Church, built in 1695, be- 
fore the English communion had found an 
abiding-place in the much older city of 
Boston. " The place is free for all per- 
suasions," he adds, " in a sober and civil 
way ; for the Church of England and the 
Quakers bear equal share in the govern- 
ment. They live friendly well together ; 
there is no persecution for religion, nor 
ever like to be." 

From the various admixture of nation- 
alities and creeds in Pennsylvania was 
evolved, in less than a century, a popula- 
tion representing many shades of belief, 
political and religious, and with strongly 
marked differences in character and ways 
of living. The early Quakers seem to 
have been less rigid in their manners and 
customs than those who followed them. 
The simplicity in dress which gradually 
obtained was at first a protest against 



^O COLONIAL DAYS AND D.AJdES. 

changes of fashion rather than to establish 
a garb that distinguished them from the 
world's people. 

On his first landing in Fenns\-l\-ania, 
William Penn w-as habited in the Ca\-alier 
costume of the day. the gold bullion upon 
the coat being left off and the broad- 
brimmed hat worn without feathers. There 
were lace ruffles at the \^Tist howe\-er, and 
some historians place a blue silk sash 
around the stalwart prop>ortions of the 
Proprietan.- and a light dress sword by his 
side. A handsome, well-built man of thirt\-- 
eight was Penn at this time, with courtly, 
gracious manners, skilled in all manly ex- 
ercises. With this picture in our minds, it 
is not difficult to believe the stor>- handed 
down by Mrs. Preston, of the athletic Eng- 
lishman entering into their games T\-ith the 
friendly Indians, and excelling them all in 
feats of agility*, or that other tale about 
John Ladd. " Friend John, thou art Ladd 
by name, and a Ladd in comprehension I"' 
exclaimed the Proprietarj-. when John Ladd 
signified his preference for readj* money 
rather than for lots in paj-moit for his sct- 



COLONIAL DAYS. 3 I 

\nces in la\-ing out the new cii\- oi Phila- 
delphia, adding, " Dost thou not know this 
will become a g^reat city ?" 

The proscriptions and admonitions that 
came later from leading Friends at home 
and 'Sasiting Friends" from abroad were 
issued in consequence of the large influx 
into Penns\-h-ania of persons of other ways 
of h\-ing and thinking, who brought %\ith 
them temptations for the younger portion 
of the communit}", in dress, manners, and 
habits. This dangerous contagion from 
proximity- to the world's people led the 
women Friends of Burlington. New Jersey, 
to issue a letter from their Yearly Meeting, 
in 1726. in which they besought their sis- 
ters to beware of *' divers undue Liberties 
that are too frequently taken by some that 
walk among us and are accounted of us," 
adding, — 

•• We are willing in the pure love of Truth which 
ha:h mercifully risited our souls Tenderlr to caution 
and advise our Friends against tho>e things we think 
inconsistent w^th our Ancient Christian Testimony of 
plainness in AppareL Some of which we think proper 
to particulari:e. — As first that immodest fashion of 
hooped Fettico>i3 or the imitation of them either by 



32 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

something put into their petticoats to make them sit 
full or wearing more than is necessary or any other 
imitation whatsoever which we take to be but a Branch 
springing from the same corrupt root of Pride. And 
also that none of our Friends accustom themselves to 
wear their Gowns with superfluous folds behind but 
plain and decent, nor to go without Aprons nor to wear 
superfluous Gathers or Pleats in their Caps or Pinners. 
Nor to wear their Heads dressed high behind, neither 
to cut or lay their hair on their Foreheads or Temples. 
And that Friends are careful to avoid wearing striped 
shoes." 

That Friendly warnings and preachings 
against fooHsh fashions were not without 
effect we learn from a letter written by 
Thomas Chalkley to his wife from Tortola, 
in the West Indies, whither he went in 
1 74 1 upon a visitation:* 

" I have a little more which I cant well omit and 
this is for those who wear hoops among us the Gover- 
nours wife her two Sisters Capt hunts wife & the 
young woman whose father turnd her out of Doors 
wore hoops before they were Convinced of ye principles 
of our friends being throughly Convinced ye Could 

* Thomas Chalkley owned a large tract of land near 
Frankford. Here he lived, and on this property his 
son-in-law, Abel James, built a handsome and substan- 
tial house, which he called Chalklev Hall. 



COLONIAL DAYS. 33 

were [they could wear] ym no longer and Divers fine 
younj^ people have Left ym of Since they have ye Same 
Excuses hear [here] all ye year as our girls has in Sum- 
mer. The Grate Lord of all gird our youth with the 
Girdle of truth and then they will not need those mon- 
strous preposterous girdes of hoops I call it monstrous be- 
cause if almighty God should make a woman in the same 
Shape her hoop makes her Everybody would Say truly 
So according to this real truth they make themselves 
Monsters by art." 

Thrift and enterprise early insured a 
certain amount of substantial comfort 
among the settlers, while the great advan- 
tages offered by fine harbors all along the 
coast and the various marketable products 
of the countr}^ soon enabled them to build 
up an extensive trade with the East and 
West Indies, Spain, Portugal, and other 
countries. Foreign luxuries thus found 
their way to the Colonies, adding much to 
the pleasures of life, and seaport towns 
gained a wider outlook into the world 
beyond through the tales of adventure 
brought home by their sailor sons, such 
tales as Eleanor Putnam describes the 
Salem children enjoying upon evenings 
when "My Cousin the Captain" and his 



34 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

old friend sailed again the voyages of their 
youth, disputing and agreeing again after 
the fashion of old-time cronies. 

The most notable instance of a fortune 
made upon the seas is that of the Pepperell 
family. The first William Pepperell came 
from Tavistock, England, to the Isle of 
Shoals, where he and his partner, Mr. Gib- 
bons, sent out their fishing smacks on the 
shores, and later set up an establishment on 
one of the islands for the curing and sale 
of their fish. On a visit to Kittery Point, 
Pepperell made the acquaintance of John 
Bray, from PK-mouth. whose seventeen- 
year-old daughter, Margery, he fell in love 
with and married, a successful venture on 
the part of the suitor having given Mr. 
Bray suflficient confidence in him to be 
willing to accept him as a son-in-law. Mr. 
Bray gave his daughter a tract of land 
upon the Point, where William Pepperell 
built a house, which was considerably added 
to by his son, Sir William Pepperell. From 
this small beginning, in a little more than 
half a century, the largest fortune in New 
England was accumulated. The Pepper- 



COLONIAL DAYS. 35 

ells built vessels and sent many to the 
West Indies laden with lumber, fish, oil, 
and live-stock, to be exchanged for dry- 
goods, wine, and salt, or to sell both vessel 
and cargo. Their largest business was in 
fisheries, however, and they are known to 
have had as many as a hundred small 
vessels on the Grand Banks at one time. 

While the Southern Colony of Virginia 
had her great planters who, like " King 
Carter," were renowned for the sumptu- 
ousness and state in which they lived. 
New York could boast her famous Dutch 
traders who lived in substantial comfort 
in their " Bouweries" upon the outskirts 
of New Amsterdam, and Massachusetts 
could claim such successful merchants 
as Elias Hasket Derby, the eccentric 
Timothy Dexter, and " King Hooper," 
whose stately home, later known as the 
Collins and the Peabody House, from 
subsequent possessors, is still standing. 
Robert Hooper, Esq., of Marblehead, who 
built his house at Danvers, once Salem 
village, was something of a Tory, and when 
General Gage found Boston too hot for 



36 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

him, he removed to Danvers and took up 
his abode in the Hooper House, where he 
resided for several months, protected by- 
two companies of troops which were en- 
camped in its vicinity. 

Madam Knight, in her famous journey 
on horseback through the country that 
stretches between Boston and New York, 
doubtless gives a faithful picture of the 
rough and uncomfortable living of that 
early time ; this, however, was country liv- 
ing, and even then presented a great con- 
trast to the life in villages and towns. She 
records of the Indians whom she meets, 
that they are " the most salvage of all the 
salvages of that kind that I had ever seen," 
yet they do not appear to have molested 
her, and if her entertainment was so hard 
at one " Ordinary" that she walked out, 
having paid, as she remarked, her sixpence 
for " the smell of her Dinner," and at an- 
other time objected to "the Pumpkin and 
Indian mixt Bred, and the Bare Legged 
Punch," and at Norwalk to her bed of corn 
husks, which, " when scratched up by Lit- 
tle Miss, Russelled as if she'd been in the 



COLONIAL DAYS. 3/ 

Barn amongst the Husks," there were other 
places, as Saxton's at Stonington, the widow 
Prentice's at New London, New Haven, 
and Fairfield, where she was " well ac- 
commodated as to victuals and Lodging," 
and hospitable entertainment was offered 
her in the homes of the Rev. Gurden Sal- 
tonstall, of New London, and Governor 
John Winthrop, of New Haven. 

One of the most amusing passages of 
Madam Knight's diary, and one that best 
illustrates the crudity of the life of the time 
and place, as well as her own native wit, is 
the account of her experience at " Haven's 
Tavern in the Narragansett Country," 
where, having retired to her room, which 
was parted from the kitchen by a single 
board partition, and " to a bed which the 
pretty hard, was yet neet and handsome," 
she finds herself unable to sleep because 
of a dispute of some topers in the next 
room over the signification of the name of 
their country, Narragansett : 

" One said it was named so by y^ Indians, because 
there grew a Brier there, of a prodigious Highth and 
bigness, the like hardly ever known, called by the 
4 



38 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Indians Narragansett ; And quotes an Indian of so 
Barberous a name for his Author, that I could not 
write it. His Antagonist Replyed no — It was from a 
Spring it had its name, w<='' hee well knew where it was, 
which was extreem cold in summer, and as Hott as 
could be imagined in the winter, which was much 
resorted too by the natives, and by them called Narra- 
gansett, (Hott and Cold,) and that was the originall of 
their places name — with a thousand Impertinances not 
worth notice, w"* He utter'd with such a Roreing voice 
and Thundering blows with the fist of wickedness on 
the Table, that it peirced my very head. I heartily 
fretted, and wish't 'um tongue tyed ; but with as little 
succes as a freind of mine once, who was (as shee said) 
kept a whole night awake, on a Jomy, by a country 
Left, and a Sergent, Insigne and a Deacon, contriving 
how to bring a triangle into a Square. They kept call- 
ing for tother Gill, w** while they were swallowing, 
was some Intermission." 

This draught having had the effect of 
augmenting the turmoil, or, as she says, 
" like Oyle to fire," increasing the flame, 
the philosophical traveller set her candle 
upon a chest and in the following lines 
endeavored to turn the roisterers' own 
weapons against them : 

" I ask thy Aid, O Potent Rum ! 
To charm these wrangling Topers Dum. 
Thou hast their Giddy Brains possest — 



COLONIAL DAYS. 39 

The man confounded w*** the Beast — 
And I, poor I, can get no rest. 
Intoxicate them with thy fumes : 
O still their Tongues till morning comes. 

** And I know not but my wishes took effect ; for the 
dispute soon ended w"* tother Dram; and so Good 
night!" 

It is gratifying to learn that this heroic 
if " fearfull female t'raiveller" finally reached 
her destination, New York, where she was 
received by Mr. Thomas Burroughs, a 
prominent merchant of that place, who aided 
her in attending to thebusiness forwhichshe 
had made this perilous journey, and after- 
wards entertained her with such pleasing 
diversions as a ride to witness the sleighing 
between New York and the Bowery,* fol- 
lowed by " a handsome Entertainment of 
five or six dishes and choice Beer and 
metheglin Cyder," at the house of Madam 
Dowes, a gentlewoman who lived at a farm 

* A small town on the banks of the Harlem River, 
which was a favorite resort of riding and sleighing 
parties of the time. The name Bowery was evidently 
derived from Governor Stuyvesant's bouwery, or farm, 
near by. — Valentine's History of the City of New York. 



40 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

in the neighborhood. Of the sleighing 
Madam Knight says, " I beHeve we mett 
50 or 60 slays that day — they fly with great 
swiftness and some are so furious that 
they'll turn out of the path for none except 
a London Cart." 

Mr. Burroughs also took Madam Knight 
to a " Vendue/' where she met with a 
great bargain in paper, and became ac- 
quainted with a number of persons, who 
invited her to their houses and generously 
entertained her. It was upon this journey 
that she met Madam Livingston, wife of 
Lieutenant-Colonel John Livingston, whose 
second wife was to be Mrs. Knight's own 
and only daughter, Elizabeth, at this time 
a girl of seventeen. Her impressions 
Madam Knight records, in a general way, 
as follows : " New York is a pleasant, well 
compacted place, situated on a commodious 
river which is a fine harbor for shipping, 
the Buildings, Brick Generaly, very stately 
and high, though not altogether like ours 
in Boston. . . ." 

" They have Vendues very frequently and make their 
earnings very well by them, for they treat with good 



COLONIAL DAYS. 4 1 

Liquor Liberally, and the Customers Drink as Liberally 
and Generally pay for 't as well, by paying for that 
which they Bidd up Briskly for, after the sack has gone 
plentifully about, tho' sometimes good penny worths 
are got there." 

Surely this good dame was not lacking 
in shrewdness, which, with her forcible use 
of the English tongue, even if in writing it 
she was sometimes, guilty of such trifling 
errors as the misplacing of vowels and 
consonants, rendered her worthy of being 
the early preceptress of such distinguished 
men as Dr. Samuel Mather and Dr. Frank- 
lin, who both attended her Dame's school 
established in Boston after her return from 
this journey to New York. In another 
part of her journal she says of the New 
Yorkers, " Nor do they spare for any 
diversion the place affords, and sociable to 
a degree, they'r Tables being as free to 
their Naybours as to themselves," 

" The English go very fasheonable in their dress. 
The Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from 
our women, in their habitt go loose, were French 
muches w^** are like a Capp and a head band in one, 
leaving their ears bare, which are sett out w*** Jewells 
of a large size and many in number. And their fingers 
4* 



42 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

hoop't with Rings, some with large stones in them of 
many Coullers as were their pendants in their ears, 
which You should see very old women wear as well as 
Young." 

Such were the life, customs, and dress 
of the mixed population of Dutch and 
English in New York in 1704, and we 
find equally strong contrasts occurring, 
a little later in Philadelphia, between the 
Quakers and the world's people. If the 
former appeared in sober attire, the gayer 
descendants of the early settlers arrayed 
themselves in long red cloaks, in an exag- 
gerated style of dress called " trollopes," 
very objectionable to quiet folk, in hoops 
so large that the wearer was obliged to 
enter a door crab-like, " pointing her ob- 
truding flanks end foremost," high-heeled 
shoes and stiff stays, which seem to have 
been worn by both sexes, as were the large 
curled wigs of the period. The very boys 
wore wigs, says Watson, and their dress in 
general resembled that of the men, which 
was quite as absurd in its way as the 
women's, including coat-skirts lined and 
stiffened with buckram, or set out with 



COLONIAL DAYS. 43 

wadding like a coverlet, and sleeves with 
cuffs reaching to the elbows, with lead in 
them to keep them down. 

What would Nathaniel Ward have had 
to say to men who thus bedecked their 
persons ? He had already declared him- 
self with regard to " women who lived to 
ape the latest fashion" in no measured 
terms, denominating the five or six such 
in the Colony of Massachusetts as "the 
very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a 
quarter of a cipher, the epitome of noth- 
ing," to which he added, " It is no mar- 
vel they wear trails on the hinder part of 
their heads, having nothing it seems in 
the forepart but a few squirrels' brains 
to help them frisk from one ill favored 
fashion to another." The fashions of 
both men and women, cited by Watson, 
were doubtless somewhat exaggerated in 
the transmission from one generation to 
another, and in a short time " long red 
cloak" and "trollopes" had to give way 
before offensive caricatures aimed at them, 
a female felon being led to the gallows in 
the former, while the wife of Daniel Petti- 



44 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

teau, the hangman, paraded the town in 
the latter.* 

A curious notice from the Pennsylvania 
Gazette shows that certain feminine adorn- 
ments, and even one of the much-derided 
red cloaks, had found their way into a 
household of such simplicity as the Frank- 
lins' as early as 1750. 

" Whereas on Saturday night last, the house of Ben- 
jamin Franklin, of this city, printer, was broken open, 
and the following things feloniously taken away, viz. a 
double necklace of gold beads, a woman's long scarlet 
cloak, almost new, with a double cape, a woman's 
gown, of printed cotton, of the sort called brocade 
print, very remarkable, the ground dark, with large 
red roses, and other large and yellow flowers, with blue 
in some of the flowers, with many green leaves ; a pair 
of woman's stays, covered with white tabby before, and 
dove-colour'd tabby behind, with two large steel hooks, 
and sundry other goods. Whoever discovers the thief, 
or thieves, either in this or any of the neighbouring 
provinces, so that they may be brought to justice, shall 
receive Ten Pounds reward; and for recovering any 
of the goods, a reward in proportion to their value, 
paid by Benjamin Franklin." 

It is evident that there was enough 
worldliness abroad in Philadelphia to lead 

* Watson's Annals, vol. i. p. 184. 



COLONIAL DAYS. 45 

prominent Quakers to issue such letters as 
that of the Women Friends of Burlington 
and of Thomas Chalkley, especially as a 
traveller of veracity has assured us that 
young Quakeresses were fond of ribbons 
and other gayeties in attire. 

Watson found so many diversions to 
record that he devotes a separate chapter to 
" Sports and Amusements," in which he 
tells of the " High Dutch" skating of Dr. 
Foulke, the celebrated surgeon, and of " Ox 
Roasts" on the thick-ribbed ice of the Dela- 
ware River, in the presence of numerous 
skaters, the skaters of Philadelphia being 
pre-eminent. 

Mrs. Ball advertised her school for 
teaching French, playing on the spinet, and 
dancing, in Letitia Court, about 1730; and 
a few years later, when, in consequence of 
the religious fervor excited by the preach- 
ing of Whitefield, dancing-schools, concert- 
rooms, and play-houses were closed, there 
was strong opposition to such stringent 
measures from a certain portion of the 
community, some of the gentlemen even 
breaking open the doors. The famous 



46 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Dancing Assembly, whose lists run down 
to our own day, was established in 1749. 
Places in the dance were arranged by lot, 
and partners were engaged for the evening, 
" leaving nothing," says the astute chroni- 
cler, " to the success of forwardness or 
favouritism. Gentlemen always drank tea 
with their partners the day after the assem- 
bly, — a sure means of producing a more 
lasting acquaintance, if desirable." It is 
to be hoped that pretty Quakeresses were 
sometimes allowed to participate in the 
milder festivity of such tea-drinkings, even 
if the more exciting pleasures of the dance 
were denied them. 

If gayeties and luxuries rapidly increased 
in Pennsylvania, it is gratifying to know 
that churches, meeting-houses, and schools 
kept pace with the one, and that the com- 
merce and manufactures of a largely in- 
dustrial population balanced and contrib- 
uted to the demands of the other. 

The first school in Philadelphia, opened 
by Enoch Flower in 16S3, was soon fol- 
lowed by a grammar-school, established 
by Samuel Carpenter and other leading 



COLONIAL DAYS, 47 

Friends. Over this school, in which the 
" learned languages were taught," pre- 
sided George Keith, a Scotch Friend, who 
later joined the English Church and be- 
came a grievous " thorn in the flesh" of 
good Quakers. Keith, was assisted in his 
teaching by Thomas Makin, who occa- 
sionally indulged in flights of poetry; but, 
finding pedagogy more popular than poetry, 
he finally became principal of the grammar- 
school in Keith's place, and carried it on 
with fair success. It is a curious fact that 
the small and now almost unknown sea- 
board town of Lewes boasted so superior 
a school for girls that Governor Lloyd 
sent his daughters there to complete their 
education, while to a little settlement in 
Bucks County belongs the honor of open- 
ing the first institution for collegiate in- 
struction in the Middle Colonies. The 
Log College, founded by the Rev. William 
Tennent in 1726, in which undertaking he 
was greatly assisted by his cousin James 
Logan, became the abna mater of such 
distinguished divines as William Tennent 
the younger, Samuel Finley, the Blairs, 



48 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Charles Beatty, and William Robinson, 
besides claiming the distinction of being the 
corner-stone of Princeton College, estab- 
lished more than twenty years later. 

An anecdote is told of the Rev. Charles 
Beatty, an early graduate of the Log Col- 
lege, by Dr. Franklin, which admirably 
illustrates the ready mother-wit of the 
latter. 

Dr. Beatty was acting as chaplain to 
an army of five hundred men led by 
Franklin to defend the frontier against 
the French and Indians after the burning 
of the Moravian mission at Gnadenhiitten, 
Pennsylvania. 

" Dr. Beatty complained to me," says Franklin, " that 
the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhor- 
tations. When they were enlisted, they were promised, 
besides hay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which 
was punctually served out to them, half in the morning, 
and the other half in the evening ; and I observed 
they were as punctual in attending to receive it ; upon 
which I said to Mr. Beatty, * It is perhaps below the 
dignity of your profession to act as steward of the 
rum, but if you were to deal it out, and only just after 
prayers, you would have them all about you.' " 

The shrewd suggestion was adopted by 



COLONIAL DAYS. 49 

Dr. Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin 
adds, — 

" Never were prayers more generally and more 
punctually attended ; so that I thought this method 
preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military 
laws for non-attendance on divine service." 

The fact that a Presbyterian minister 
would, under any circumstances, consent 
to measure out rum to his flock suggests 
a curious contrast between customs past 
and present ; but, as each man received 
but half a gill at a time, the reverend 
gentleman may have considered that, in 
a certain sense, he was assisting in a 
temperance movement. 

Thackeray has admirably hit off Dr. 
Franklin's readiness to advise upon all 
subjects in his picture of a dinner at 
Madam Esmond's, before the Braddock 
expedition, when General Braddock con- 
stantly turns to the " little Postmaster from 
Philadelphia" who seemed to possess much 
curious information and to have counsel to 
offer in all emergencies. Nothing seemed 
to be too great or too small for Franklin's 
c ^ 5 



50 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

consideration. While abroad upon diplo- 
matic business, he writes his wife minute 
directions about making and putting dow-n 
the carpets which he sends her ; \-et Mrs. 
Franklin was herself a notable house- 
keeper. 

In a letter written to her husband in 
1765. she speaks of papered walls in their 
new house in Franklin Court, while the 
Fair Hill mansion boasted paper as early 
as 1 717, although tlie parlors were wains- 
coted in oak and red cedar. Several car- 
pets Mrs. Franklin mentions as those in tlie 
blue room, the parlor, and otlier rooms, 
and even expresses a desire to ha\e a 
Turkey carpet, which sounds strangely 
luxurious and modem to our ears, espe- 
cially as the first carpet remembered in 
Philadelphia was seen at the house of 
Owen Jones, at Second and Spruce Streets, 
about 1750. These early carpets were not 
ver\- ample, being designed for the centre 
of the room, the chairs being set around 
the edges of tlie square, the middle of 
which was occupied by the table. Mrs. 
Franklin also mentions such luxuries as 



COLONIAL DAYS. 5 I 

a closet \\'ith glass doors, spaces for tlie 
" pier of glass." a harpsichord and harmon- 
ica ; while Sally's room, up two pairs of 
stairs, beside its regular furniture, con- 
tained a trunk and books which seem to 
be quite beyond her powers of description, 
as she adds, " but these you can't have any 
notion of" Dr. Franklin, in one of his 
earlier letters, speaks of such fanc)nngs of 
his own as a " pair of silk blankets, very 
fine, just taken in a French prize," which 
he thinks would be best to cover a summer 
bed, some fine damask table-cloths and 
napkins, snuffer-stand and extinguisher of 
ver}' beautiful workmanship, and some car- 
peting " which is to be sewed together in 
such a way as would make the figures 
match, and to be finished with a border." 

Carpets instead of sanded floors and 
wall-paper in the place of the primitive 
whitewash were finding their way into 
modest households, while much greater 
luxuries were to be seen in such resi- 
dences as those of tlie Hamiltons, Aliens, 
Fishers, Morrises, Jameses, and Willings; 
and, instead of the one maid-ser\-ant that 



52 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Gabriel Thomas speaks of in 1696 as 
among the comforts of tlie early settle- 
ment, numbers of ser\-ants were to be 
found in many households, some of them 
slaves. The " slaves" gallerj-"" is still to 
be seen in old Christ Church in Boston, 
and in Quaker Philadelphia some good 
citizens o\Mied slaves, and thought it no 
harm to ^^^ll a likely African or a neat- 
handed yellow girl to their children, as 
they left them their household furniture, 
horses, and carriages. The days had 
passed by, in 1760. when the carriages 
and chariots driven in this cit\- could be 
told off on the fingers of two hands, as 
in Mrs. Mcllvaine's lines : 

" Judge Allen drove a coach and four 

Of h.indsome dappled grays, 
Shippens, Penns, Pembertons. and Morrises, 
Powels, Cadwaladers, aiid Xorrises 

Drove only pairs of blacks and bays." 

Du Simitiere enumerates the carriages 
driven in Philadelphia in 1772 as number- 
ing nearly one hundred, although William 
Peters and Thomas Willine could lonsr 



COLONIAL DAYS. 53 

claim the distinction of driving the only- 
landaus in old Philadelphia. 

The time was long past, even in New 
England, when the iron hand of law or 
the voice of admonition could keep back 
the tide of progress in religious toleration 
or in the gentler arts of life. If, in early- 
days in Plymouth, the settlers walked to 
the meeting, the governor and elders at 
their head, the men armed and equipped 
as for battle, the women, children, and 
servants well guarded from attack, the day 
came before the century was out when the 
governor rolled to the place of worship in 
his coach. In 1695, Judge Sewall writes 
that he prevailed upon " Governor Brad- 
street and his Lady" * to walk to his new 
house and wish him joy of it, " after which 
they sat near an hour with Mrs. Corwin and 
Wharton, and the Governor drank a glass 
or two of wine, eat some fruit, and took a 
pipe of tobacco in the new Hall, and finally 
went away between twelve and one in 
Madame Richard's new Coach and horses." 

* Simon Bradstreet's second wife, Mistress Gardner. 
His first wife, Anne, the poetess, died in 1672. 

5* 



54 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

Joseph Bennett, coming to New England 
somewhat later, writes, " There are several 
Familys in Boston that keep a Coach and 
pair of Horses, and some few drive \\nth 4 
horses ; but for Chaises and Saddle Horses, 
considering the bulk of the place [they] 
out do London. When the Ladies ride 
out to take the Air it is generally in a 
Chaise or Chair ; tho' but a single Horse'd 
one and they have a Negro ser\-ant to dri\-e 
'em." 

The dancing of Morton and his followers 
at Merr}' Mount was promptly stopped and 
their scandalous May-pole cut do%vn: yet 
there were others in New England who 
danced before the next century was old, as 
we find that Charles Bradstreet in 1759 
was permitted by the selectmen of the 
town of Salem to " teach dancing" in con- 
nection with French, " so long as he keeps 
good order." while a little later Lawrence 
DObleville. a native of Paris and a Prot- 
estant, was employed in Salem and other 
towns "teaching children and youth to 
dance and good manners." 

Althousrh Governor Endicott cut the 



COLONIAL DAYS. 55 

cross out of tlie English flag because, to 
his mind, it savored of popen', it was re- 
stored to its place, and we find Samuel 
Sewall, fifty years later, still in doubt 
about this emblem in the colors, wondering 
whether it might not hinder his " Entrance 
into the Holy Land." Still greater and 
more grievous changes was he to behold 
whom Mr. Lodge signalizes as the " Last 
of tlie Puritans," when, under Governor 
Andros. the service of the English Church 
was permitted in Boston, and was heard 
wnthin the walls of the venerated Old 
South. With the admission of the Eng- 
lish Church, which meant an outward 
toleration for other religious bodies, there 
came into the very strongholds of Puritan- 
ism a wider liberty in manners, customs, 
and habits of life. 

Tradition tells of a spirited Colonial 
lady, wife of a squire in Hadley, INLissa- 
chusetts, who was formally excommuni- 
cated by the parson and elders of the 
meeting for the sin of being present at the 
Christmas celebration of two poor Ger- 
mans living upon her husband's estate. 



56 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Slowly and steadily, however, the new wine 
was working in the old bottles, and al- 
though Samuel Sewall records with satis- 
faction, as late as Christmas, 1697, " Shops 
are open and Carts and Sleds come to 
Town with Wood and Fagots as formerly, 
save what abatement may be allowed on 
account of the wether," he is forced to con- 
clude his characteristic entry with the dis- 
couraging statement that Joseph, his son, 
told him that " most of the Boys went to 
the Church," adding, " yet he went not." 
The old barriers were giving way, new cus- 
toms and observances were coming in. In 
Puritan New England, as well as in Quaker 
Pennsylvania, the joyous holiday of Chris- 
tian hope was being kept. In New Amster- 
dam the New- Year festival was a period of 
greater rejoicing, but in Virginia and the 
Southern Colonies an old-time English 
Christmas, with yule-log, mistletoe bough, 
and church services, early marked the sea- 
son. In Pennsylvania there were many who 
held aloof from the observance of the day, 
but with less severity than the Puritan, the 
Quaker's inward light being apparently in- 



COLONIAL DAYS. 57 

tended more for his own guidance than 
for that of his neighbor, and Watson speaks 
of May-Day and Christmas celebrations in 
Philadelphia as of long-established usage. 
Of the latter he records, — 

" The ' Belsh Nichel' and St. Nicholas has been a 
time of Christmas amusement from time immemorial 
among us; brought in, it is supposed, among the 
sportive frolics of the Germans. It is the same also 
observed in New York, under the Dutch name of St. 
Claes. ' Belsh Nichel,' in high German, expresses 
' Nicholas in his fur' or sheep-skin clothing. He is 
alv^ays supposed to bring good things at night to good 
children, and a rod for those who are bad." 

The first signs of Christmas-keeping in 
New England seem to picture the dawn of 
a brighter day for the Puritan child, whose 
natural and spontaneous development must 
have been sadly checked and hampered by 
the straitness of the life surrounding it, even 
in homes where there was full and plenty, 
by the dismal Sabbaths which weighed 
heavily upon the exuberant energy of the 
healthy young creature, with their sermons 
of such length that Nathaniel Ward him- 
self confesses, " we have a strong weakness 



5$ COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

in New England that when we are speak- 
ing, we know not how to conclude, we make 
many ends before we make an end." 

In letters and diaries of the time we find 
small mention of the children, except to 
record their birth and death, or, perchance, 
to note when they had the small-pox. or 
when they were inoculated to prevent their 
ha\Tng it. as when Judge L}Tide \\Tites, — 

" Daughter Lvdia went to Boston, and was inocu- 
lated by Dr. Charles Pvnchon; thro' God's goodness 
had it so favourably as every day to be about, and in 
14 days went out visiting, and on 5th May returned 
well to Salem, Laus Deo I" 

Sometimes an entr\- records the number 
of olive-branches upon the family vine, 
with a certain pride of possession, or tells 
of some spiritual experience marking the 
turning of tlie page from childhood to 
manhood or womanhood. Scant space %\'as 
found in those days to dwell upon childish 
jo\*s, and when sorrows are mentioned they 
seem strangely akin to those of the gro^\■n 
folks, as when little Anne Dudley, at six or 
seven, relates her grief, not over a fractured 
doll or tov. but because of her "ne<rlect of 



COLONIAL DAYS. 59 

Private Duteys" in which she is too often 

tardy; while at sixteen, finding herself 
" camall and sitting loose from God," she 
accepts the small-pox that then " smott" 
her as a " proper rebuke to her pride and 
vanit}'." Reared in such an atmosphere of 
morbid conscientiousness and theological 
disputation, the children in the streets 
caught the current phrases, and during 
the Hutchinson trial jeered one another 
as believers in the " Covenant of Grace" 
or in the *' Covenant of Works." We 
can only hope that certain pleasures in- 
separable from country living belonged 
to the children of New England. Even 
the larger towns were but small settle- 
ments in those days, surrounded by 
forests or bounded on one side or tlie 
other by the sea. Hence we may believe 
that the boys spent their recreation hours 
in the woods or by the water, and that the 
girls were sometimes permitted to leave 
their tasks and stretch their limbs by en- 
tering into their brothers' sports, — fishing, 
boating, nutting in the autumn woods, and, 
rare diversion of the New England winter, 



6o 



COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 



coasting down the long hills and skating 
upon the ponds ! 

Such pleasures being theirs, we may- 
still rejoice that for Puritan children was 
coming, surely if slowly, the joy of the 
child's festival ; and that all along the 
coast, from the scant observance in New 
England to the generous English celebra- 
tion of the day in the Southern Colonies, 
the high festival of the Christian year was 
to bring expectancy, good cheer, well-filled 
stockings, gifts and greetings to the chil- 
dren who were destined to be the mothers 
and fathers of a great nation. 




WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLE- 
MENT. 

Rumors have come to our ears of a 
toast to the Puritan Mothers, from those 
of their sons who meet together in the 
New England Society, to pour out liba- 
tions, bum incense, and consume canvas- 
back and terrapin in honor of their ances- 
tors, the especial claim of these worthy- 
dames upon the consideration of the present 
generation being based upon the fact that, 
in addition to enduring all the hardships 
that fell to the lot of the Puritan Fathers, 
they had to endure the Puritan Father 
himself However this may have been, 
and we doubt not, with all due respect to 
6 6i 



62 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

their sterling qualities, that some of these 
progenitors of ours were, like Carlyle, 
" gey ill to live wi','' it seems as if the 
courage, patience, and heroism of the 
pioneer women of America had not been 
sufficiently honored. 

Heroic and much-enduring women we 
naturally think of in connection with the 
Revolutionary struggle, but of such there 
were not a few in the early settlement of 
the country, whether upon the bleak hill- 
sides of New England, where the winters 
were more severe and the soil less produc- 
tive than farther south, or upon the banks 
of the Hudson and the Delaware, or still 
farther south along the Chesapeake and the 
James. A vision of the pioneer women 
of the Massachusetts Colony, led by the 
girlish figures of Mary Chilton and Pris- 
cilla Mullins, inevitably rises before the 
retrospective student, because a certain 
halo of romance has ever encircled these 
two picturesque personalities. 

Others there were, equally lovely and 
quite as picturesque, whom the pens of the 
romance writer and the poet have as yet 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 63 

failed to touch. In the immigration to 
Salem in 1630 there came, in a vessel that 
bore her name, the Lady Arbella Johnson, 
daughter of the third Earl of Lincoln, in 
company with her husband, her sister 
Susan, wife of John Humphrey, the Dud- 
leys, Simon Bradstreet and his "verse- 
making wife," the two daughters of Sir 
Robert Saltonstall, and other ladies of 
high degree who dined with the Lady 
Arbella in the " great cabin." Delicately 
nurtured and frail of constitution, Lady 
Arbella had been urged to remain in 
England for a time, but rather than be 
separated from her husband she was 
willing to brave the perils of the long 
voyage and the hardships of pioneer life 
in a strange land. She lived only to be- 
hold the shores of the new world clad in 
spring beauty, before closing her eyes for- 
ever to earthly visions, or, as Mr. Cotton 
Mather wrote years after, she " left an 
earthly paradise in the family of an Earl- 
dom, to encounter the sorrows of a wil- 
derness, for the entertainments of a pure 
worship in the house of God ; and then 



64 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

immediately left that wilderness for the 
Heavenly paradise." Of the husband of 
this lady, Mr. Isaac Johnson, who was one 
of the most influential men in the settle- 
ment, Mather wrote with qusiint pathos, — 

" He try'd 
To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'd. 

His mourning for his amiable consort was 
too bitter to be extended a year ; about 
a month after her death his ensued, unto 
the extream loss of the whole plantation." 
Of how many more the same sad story 
could be told, we realize when we learn 
that of the small company that landed at 
Plymouth fifty died in two months, while 
the ranks of the settlers of Charlestown 
and Salem were sadly depleted by pesti- 
lence and starvation. The needs and dis- 
tress of the colonists are plainly revealed 
by a picture, that has come down to us, of 
the first American Thanksgiving Day. A 
fast had been appointed, which it was not 
difficult to enforce, as the governor's last 
baking of bread had been put in the oven, 
and many of the settlers were subsist- 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 6$ 

ing upon clams, acorns, and various nuts, 
" 'Twas marvellous," says Mather, " to see 
how helpfiil these good people were to one 
another, following the example of their 
most hberal governour Winthrop, who 
made an equal distribution of what he 
had in his own stores among the poor, 
taking no thought of to-morrow." It is 
related that he was generously giving 
from his own scant supply a handful of 
meal to a poor man distressed by the wolf 
at the door, when a ship was seen in the 
harbor bearing provisions for all. The fast 
day was speedily turned into a season of 
rejoicing, and the first formal proclamation 
was issued for Thanksgiving Day by Gov- 
ernor Winthrop, who, in the face of all 
discouragements, stoutly maintained that 
if it were all to be done over again he 
would do no differently. 

The " contented mind" of the old adage 
must have often provided those good peo- 
ple with a " continual feast," when there 
was little else to serve, and we cannot but 
admire the thankful spirit of a certain 
" honest man who invited his friends to a 
e 6* 



66 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

dish of clams, and at table offered up 
fervent thanks to Heaven who /tad given 
them to suck the abundance of the seas, 
and of the treasures hid in the sands." 

Although there was less suffering from 
cold and hunger and far less mortality in 
the Provinces of Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey than in Massachusetts, there were 
many hardships and discomforts in settle- 
ments where few houses had been erected 
in advance. Many of the immigrants 
dwelt in caves along the banks of the 
Delaware, then a high, bold shore called 
Coaquannock. " These caves," says Wat- 
son, " were generally formed by digging 
into the ground, near the verge of the 
river-front bank, about three feet in 
depth ; thus making half their chamber 
under ground ; and the remaining half 
above ground was formed of sods of earth 
or earth and brush combined. The roofs 
were formed of layers of limbs, or split 
pieces of trees, over-laid with sod or bark, 
river rushes, etc. The chimneys were 
of stones and river pebbles, mortared 
together with clay and grass, or river 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 6/ 

reeds." This description answers to that 
of some of the Indian dwellings suffi- 
ciently to suggest that the friendly natives 
may have lent their new neighbors a 
hand in the preparation of these tempo- 
rary abodes. The Owens' cave was on a 
shelving bank on the south side of Spruce 
Street west of Second, afterwards Town- 
send's Court. The Coateses, Morrises, 
Guests, and others dwelt in these primi- 
tive habitations until they were able to 
build themselves houses, the latter family 
living in a cave near the Crooked Billet 
wharf, so named from an old tavern on the 
river, north of Chestnut Street, which had 
a crooked billet of wood for its sign. From 
family papers we learn that when William 
and Elizabeth Hard arrived in Philadel- 
phia the latter rejoiced and considered it 
an especial providence to find her sister, 
Alice Guest, whom she had not seen for 
years, living sumptuously in her own cave 
by the river bank, where Elizabeth and her 
husband were entertained. Of Mrs. Hard's 
own share in the building of her home, her 
niece, Deborah Morris, thus quaintly tells : 



68 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" All that came wanted a Dwelling and hastened to 
provide one. As they lovingly helped each other, the 
Women even set themselves to work that they had not 
been used to before ; for few of the first settlers were 
of the Laborous Class, and help of that source was 
scarce. My good Aunt thought it expedient to help 
her Husband at the end of the saw, and to fetch all 
such Water to make such kind of Mortar, as they then 
had to build their chimney. At one time being over- 
wearied therewith, her Husband desired her to forbear, 
saying, ' thou had better, my dear, think of dinner;' on 
which, poor woman, she walked away, weeping as she 
went, reflecting on herself for coming here, to be ex- 
posed to such hardships, and then knew not where to 
get a dinner, for their Provision was all spent, except a 
small quantity of Biscuit and Cheese, of which she had 
not informed her Husband ; but thought she would try 
which of her friends had any to spare. Thus she 
walked on towards their tent (happy time when each 
one's treasure lay safe in their tents), but a little too 
desponding in her mind, for which she felt herself 
closely reproved, and as if queried with — ' Did not thou 
come for liberty of conscience, — hast thou not got it, 
also been provided for beyond thy expectation ?' which 
so humbled her, she on her knees begged forgiveness 
and for Preservation in the near future and never Re- 
pined after. 

" When she rose from her knees, and was going to 
seek for other food than what she had, her Cat came 
into the Tent, and had caught a fine large Rabbit, 
which she thankfully received and dressed as an Eng- 
lish hare. When her Husband came to dinner, being 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 69 

informed of the particulars, they both wept with 
reverential Joy, and Eat their Meal, which was thus 
seasonably provided for them, in singleness of heart. 
Many such divinely Providential cares did they partake 
of. Thus did our worthy Witness the Arm of Divine 
love extended for Their Support within and without, 
which is not shorten'd, his love and Power remains the 
same and ever will to his depending Children." 

It is interesting to know that relics 
of these Pennsylvania cave-dwellers have 
been preserved even to this century, one of 
the descendants of Mrs. Hard having, says 
Watson, " a very pretty chair, low and 
small, which had been a sitting-chair in 
that cave." 

Still more pleasing is it to learn that com- 
fort and prosperity fell to the share of Mr. 
and Mrs. Hard, and that when they and 
their Morris relatives owned family plate, 
some of it was marked with an engraved 
design of the faithful cat bearing in her 
mouth the providential rabbit. 

Of John and Rebecca Head, who arrived 
in Philadelphia early in the last century, it 
is related that, having a flock of little ones 
to convey to their new home, and various 
household utensils, and there being no con- 



70 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

veyance in tliose days, tliey hit upon the 
expedient of putting the two younger girls 
in a tub, each of the parents taking a han- 
dle. The older children. Rebecca and 
Man*-, aged respectively four and three 
ye^irs. \\-alked in front, carr\-ing all the 
goods that tlieir little hands could hold. 
" Thus." says tlie narrator. Mr. George 
Vaux, a descendant of one of these chil- 
dren. " our ancestors wended their \\-ay 
from tlie \\-ater's edge to tlieir first dwelling 
place in the New World.' ^ 

Within half a centur\- the Head family 
became so prosperous that the descend- 
ants of the little cliildren who took tlieir 
first American ride in a tub were able to 
drive their carriages, one of them being 
the ancestress of Johns Hopkins, whose 
large fortune and generous spirit estab- 
lished in Baltimore the university- and hos- 
pital that bear his name. Another sister. 
Elsther. bom in Philadelphia, was the an- 

* This incident \ras related bv one of these children. 
Martha Head, to her grand-dauirhter. Philadelphia 
Pemberton. who transmitted it to Mr. Vaux throi^ his 
cousin, Manr Ann Bacon. 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. /I 

cestress of the late George Sharswood, 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
Pennsyh^ania ; while of another descend- 
ant, John Head, the following story is told. 
Robert Morris, the financier, was urged to 
apply to Mr. Head for assistance in the 
early days of the Revolution, when the 
Continental Congress was greatly ham- 
pered for money to provision and clothe 
the troops. Mr. Head was known to 
have made a large fortune in the ship- 
ping business, and, although he was a 
Quaker, it was hoped that he would yield 
to the entreaties of his friend Mr. Morris. 
The latter explained to the Quaker mer- 
chant the necessities of the case, the 
gloomy outlook for the winter, and the 
importance of raising a considerable sum 
of money for immediate use, to which 
Friend Head replied, after listening with 
much attention, " Thou knowest the prin- 
ciples of our society, and that I cannot 
conscientiously do anything to promote 
and keep up a war." Mr. Morris renewed 
his entreaties, with such effect that the 
old gentleman finally sprang up, saying, 



72 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" Robert, on that mantel is a key, in that 
room is an iron chest," and without another 
word upon the subject took up his hat and 
left the house. A word to the wise was, 
in this instance, sufficient, as Mr. Morris 
took up the key and opened the chest, 
from which he took sixty thousand dollars 
in gold and silver, with which clothing, 
shoes, and other necessities were provided 
for the army. Soon after, the battle of 
Trenton was fought, and the affairs of the 
Colonies assumed a brighter aspect. The 
narrator adds that Mr. Morris left treasury 
notes to the amount of sixty thousand 
dollars in place of the coin, which notes 
were later redeemed by the new govern- 
ment, and the descendants of this patriotic 
and charitable Quaker are still enjoying 
the money which he was willing to risk 
pro bono publico. Somewhat similar stories 
are told of Abel James, who, like John 
Head, was one of the wealthiest of the 
old Philadelphia merchants, and of John 
Morton. 

There is no reason to doubt that these 
men all helped the Colonies in their hour 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 73 

of need, as they were men of large fortune, 
and like many other Friends, although op- 
posed to war on general principles, consid- 
ered the cause in which the Revolutionary 
party was engaged a just and righteous 
one. 

Among others who came to Pennsyl- 
vania to endure the hardships of the early 
settlement, which were in some cases less 
to be dreaded than the persecution that 
beset them at home, were Robert Owen 
and his wife, from Wales. He had received 
a commission as Captain of the Militia and 
Governor of Beaumaris Castle, and, being 
unwilling to take an oath at the time of the 
Restoration, was imprisoned at Dolgelly, 
Merionethshire, for five years. To Robert 
Owen's wife, who was a sympathizing help- 
meet in all his trials, one historian pays 
the following high tribute : " She was a 
woman rarely endowed with many natural 
gifts, and not given to many words." 

Here also came Grace Thomas, whose 
son Gabriel wrote the first history of the 
Pennsylvania settlement, a small volume 
full of quaint observations and valuable 

D 7 



74 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

facts, and whose daughter Rachel was soon 
after her arrival married to the first Thomas 
Wharton, at the Bank Meeting-House on 
the Delaware, where so many couples were 
united. From the number of marriages 
early recorded, love-making seems to have 
been a favorite pastime upon those long 
voyages, which lasted more weeks than it 
now takes days to cross the Atlantic, espe- 
cially when an unexpected trip to the West 
Indies was taken at the will of the wind. 
A certain Sea-mercy Adams, among the 
early arrivals, was married to Mary Brett ; 
but the first Philadelphia bride was Priscilla 
Allen, who was married, in 1 682, to Thomas 
Smith, they having passed one meeting in 
the Isle of Wight. 

Many pioneer women who endured 
hardness for conscience' sake, and for the 
love of husbands and fathers, who brought 
them to these shores, were doubtless 
worth their weight in gold ; but it is not 
recorded of all of them that this exact 
measure of appreciation was meted out to 
them as in the case of Sarah Morris. Of 
her we read that when she married Joseph 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. y$ 

Richardson, her father, Anthony Morris, 
placed her in one scale, balancing her 
weight with gold in the other for a mar- 
riage dower. The family chronicle quaintly 
adds that the bride was of exceeding small 
stature. 

Mrs. Earle, in her valuable and enter- 
taining picture of New England customs 
and fashions, relates a somewhat similar 
incident in connection with the first mar- 
riage of Judge Sewall, except that in the 
latter case the bride was counted only 
worth her weight in silver. Her father, 
Captain Joseph Hull, gave the future 
Mrs. Sewall her dower in shillings, of the 
famous " pine-tree" brand. 

Progressiveness among women, espe- 
cially in business matters, is usually con- 
sidered a nineteenth century departure, 
yet back in the days of the settlement of 
Pennsylvania we find Madame Mary Fer- 
ree taking up a tract of two thousand five 
hundred acres in what is now Lancaster 
County. Madame Ferree was the widow 
of John Ferree, a French gentleman of 
distinction. She fled to Germany to es- 



76 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

cape religious persecution in France, and, 
after spending two years in England, came 
to New York, and afterwards to Pennsyl- 
vania. While in England, Madame Ferree 
was presented to Queen Anne by William 
Penn, to whom she brought letters of in- 
troduction. From such luxuries and at- 
tractions as the Old World presented to one 
fitted to enjoy them, this heroic woman set 
forth with her family to make a home in 
what was then counted the wild west. 

Another enterprising settler was Mrs. 
Duncan, from Scotland, whose name ap- 
pears in early Philadelphia directories as 
" Margaret Duncan, Merchant, No. i S. 
Water Street." On her voyage to Amer- 
ica the vessel in which Mrs. Duncan sailed 
was wrecked, and the passengers who took 
to the boats soon found that they had car- 
ried so little food with them that they were 
forced to draw lots in order to divide the 
scant supply. In an hour of great ex- 
tremity, when there seemed small hope of 
rescue, Mrs. Duncan made a vow to build 
a church in her new home in the event of 
her deliverance. The " Vow Church" stood 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. // 

on the west side of Thirteenth Street, north 
of Market, and, Hke the Roman Catholics' 

" Votive frigate, soft aloft 
Riding in air this hundred years, 
Safe smiling at old hopes and fears," 

long bore witness to the faith, prosperity, 
and gratitude of this good Presbyterian 
settler of old Philadelphia. 

A merchant princess from whom many 
New Yorkers are descended was Margaret 
Hardenbrook, who married, in 1659, Ru- 
dolphus De Vries, an extensive trader of 
New Amsterdam, and after his death be- 
came the wife of Frederick Philipse. Dur- 
ing her widowhood Mrs. De Vries under- 
took the management of her husband's 
estate, which is said to have been a prac- 
tice not uncommon in New Amsterdam, 
and was early known as a woman trader, 
going to Holland repeatedly in her own 
ship as supercargo, and buying and trading 
in her own name. After her second mar- 
riage, Mrs. Philipse still continued to man- 
age her estate, and through his wife's thrift 
and enterprise, as much as through his 
own industry, Mr. Philipse soon came to 
7* 



78 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

be the richest man in the Colony, being 
an extensive trader with the Five Nations 
at Albany, and sending ships to both the 
East and the West Indies. From this 
marriage of Margaret De Vries was de- 
scended Mary Philipse, whose chief claim 
to distinction now rests upon the tradition 
that she was an early love of Colonel 
Washington's. 

If in the days of the settlement there 
were to be seen in Massachusetts and Penn- 
sylvania interesting and notable women, 
through all the Colonies we find their faces 
and voices lending softer shadings to the 
rugged scenes of pioneer life. Many of 
these women were the wives and daugh- 
ters of Colonial governors, secretaries, and 
chief justices, patroons and landed proprie- 
tors. Being of good birth and breeding, 
and equipped with whatever intellectual 
training was deemed suitable for a woman 
in those days, they not only brought com- 
fort and the sunshine of happiness into the 
early homes of America, but also a certain 
refinement and elevation of thought which 
are most frequently a woman's donation 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 79 

to the life around her. When we look 
into the faces of some of these Colonial 
Dames, as they have come down to us 
in portraits of the time, and read there 
the strength, nobility, and self-restraint 
that the lines disclose, we realize how 
much these women contributed towards 
the character-building that rendered the 
Revolutionary period an almost phenom- 
enal epoch in the history of nations. 

An interesting and significant circum- 
stance in the settlement of Virginia is to 
be found in the fact that no women came 
over among the earliest colonists, as did 
those who came to make homes upon the 
more northern shores. " The Virginia 
pioneers were treated," says Mr. Drake, 
" not as men, but more as soldiers sent out 
to occupy an enemy's country." Does not 
this circumstance, taken in connection with 
the fact that " the painstaking men of arts 
and practices" needed for the settlement of 
a colony were wanting in this one, account 
for the failure of some of the early at- 
tempts at colonization in Virginia ? From 
the humbler walks of life there was sent 



80 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

over to this colony, by Sir Edwin Sandys, 
a number of young women of good char- 
acter to be sold to such of the planters 
as would take them for wives in pay- 
ment of their passage money, the sum to 
be paid in tobacco. Sir Edwin realized 
that unless the settlements came to be 
looked upon as a home they would not 
succeed, notwithstanding all Virginia's 
natural advantages, of which Raphe 
Hamor wrote, " I know no one country 
yielding, without art or industry, so many 
fruits ; sure I am England does not." It 
was considered a great event when a gen- 
tlewoman, Mistress Forrest, and her maid 
came over with Newport in one of his 
later voyages, especially as the maid, 
Anne Burras, married one of the settlers, 
John Laydon. In the manuscript records 
of Maryland there are mentioned a Mar- 
garet and a Mary Brent, friends or rela- 
tives of Governor Leonard Calvert, who 
visited the Isle of Kent accompanied by 
Anne, a lame maid-servant of Sir Edward 
Plowden. The fact that such arrivals as 
these were chronicled as matters of im- 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 8 1 

portance would seem to indicate that few 
gentlewomen came early to the Southern 
Colonies. Yet from the records of arrivals 
it appears that a number of women of the 
better class came to Virginia with their 
husbands between 1617 and 1624, while 
the Hamiltons and Chews, later residents 
of Pennsylvania, were early settlers in 
Maryland and Virginia. Later, there arose 
upon the banks of the James, the Potomac, 
and the Chesapeake, stately mansions sur- 
rounded by plantations that rivalled the 
parks of old England, — Shirley, Brandon, 
Westover, Gunston Hall, the home of the 
Masons, Flower de Hundred, Wyanoke, 
the Hermitage, Wye House, — names syn- 
onymous with generous living, hospitality, 
and all the charms with which refined 
womanhood adorns a home. It was to 
Ampthill, his country seat on the James 
River, that Archibald Cary brought his 
beautiful wife, Mary Randolph, an aunt of 
the famous John Randolph of Roanoke, 
and grandmother of Thomas Mann Ran- 
dolph, Jr., Governor of Virginia. 

An early Maryland settler was Madam 
/ 



82 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Anna Neale. whose husband was a man 
greatly trusted by Charles I. of Eng- 
land, while she was in the ser\'ice of 
Queen Henrietta Maria as maid of honor. 
Among family heirlooms, still to be seen, 
are a large ring containing a miniature 
likeness of Charles I., and a pendant from 
a necklace, oval in form, set in brilliants 
and pearls, and encircling a figure of the 
Blessed Virgin standing under a crown 
upon a crescent, supported by the head of 
a cherub, all of which is supposed to be a 
representation of the Assumption. Both of 
these heirlooms were presents from the ill- 
fated royal couple of England. Nothing 
definite is known of Mrs. Neale's birth 
or parentage, although a family chronicle 
quaintly records that " it was not to her 
discredit that she was an American by 
birth, and a daughter of Benjamin Gynne 
(or Gill), a planter of Charles Count>-, 
Maryland, where Captain Neale became 
acquainted with her and married her."* 

* Later investigations incline us to the belief that 
Anna Gill was bom in England, and probably married 
Captain Neale abroad, as she and her four children 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. S3 

Be this as it may, Captain and Mrs. Neale 
were both in England during the reign of 
Charles I., and much trusted by the ro>-al 
family, the captain being sent by the king 
and the Duke of York on a secret mis- 
sion to Spain. " The relations of a poUt- 
ical nature," says the family narrative, 
" shown by this agency were such as to 
bring him into personal friendship with the 
long, and Mrs. Xeale, through her hus- 
band's influence, into the ser\-ice of the 
queen, and also warranted their asking and 
ha\'ing the presence of her Majesty (by 
proxy) at the baptism of their eldest daugh- 
ter, whom they were permitted to name 
* Henrietta Maria,' in honor of her royal 
sponsor. " * 

After the execution of the king in 
164S. Captain Neale brought his family to 

were naturalized on coming to Maryland in 1666. One 
account of this ladv tells us that she was a maid of honor 
at the court of Anne of Austria, ■which may have been 
true, as Queen Henrietta Maria took refuge with her 
royal sister-in-law in France, whither her maid of honor, 
Anna Gill, may have accompanied her. 

* The Chamberlaine Family, by John Bezman Kerr. 



84 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Maryland, and purchased a tract of land 
in Charles County with Spanish coins 
known as " cob dollars," thus originating 
the name of Cob Neck, where he settled. 
From the union of these two romantic fig- 
ures in the early history of Maryland have 
descended Lloyds, Tilghmans, Hollydays, 
Haywards, Goldsboroughs, Chamberlaines, 
Carrolls, Blakes, and Milnors, while fair 
Henrietta Marias in different generations 
have perpetuated the name of their royal 
godmother. From Captain James and 
Anna Neale came the distinguished Arch- 
bishop Neale, who was educated in France, 
ministered to Philadelphia and Baltimore 
parishes, and was later President of George- 
town College. Another noted descendant 
of Madam Neale was Charles Carroll, the 
barrister, who acted so important a part in 
early Revolutionary conventions in Mary- 
land. His father. Dr. Charles Carroll, was 
of the great Irish house of Ely O'CarroU, 
while his mother was lovely Dorothy 
Blake, a grand-daughter of Anna Neale. 

If few women came to Virginia in the 
first immigration, there were in 1676 wives 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 85 

and daughters who took sides with their 
husbands and fathers in the Great Re- 
bellion, and, like the young wife of Major 
Cheeseman, had courage to face the cruel 
and despotic Berkeley. A few years earlier 
the first William Byrd had brought his 
English wife, Mary Horsmanden, to West- 
over, where his son William was born. 
Early in the next century Lady Spots wood 
accompanied her husband to what must 
have then seemed the outermost bounds 
of civilization, Germanna, Governor Spots- 
wood's settlement of Germans upon the 
Rapidan, where he built the first iron fur- 
nace in North America. 

"An enchanted castle," Colonel Byrd 
calls Germanna, of which he writes in his 
entertaining " Progress to the Mines," — 

" I arrived about three o'clock, and found only Mrs. 
Spotswood at home, who received her old acquaintance 
with many a gracious smile. I was carried into a room 
elegantly set off with pier glasses, the largest of which 
came soon after to an odd misfortune. Amongst other 
favourite animals that cheered this lady's solitude, a 
brace of tame deer ran familiarly about the house, and 
one of them came to stare at me as a stranger. But 
unluckily spying his own figure in the glass, he made a 



86 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

spring over the tea-table that stood under it, and shat- 
tered the glass to pieces, and, falling back upon the 
tea-table, made a terrible fracas among the china. This 
exploit was so sudden, and accompanied with such a 
noise, that it surprised me, and perfectly frightened Mrs. 
Spotswood. But it was worth all the damage, to show 
the moderation and good humour with which she bore 
the disaster. In the evening the noble colonel came 
home from his mines, who saluted me ver)' civilly, and 
Mrs. Spotswood's sister, Miss Theky, who had been to 
meet him en cavalier, was so kind too as to bid me 
welcome. We talked over a legend of old stories, 
supped about nine, and then prattled with the ladies till 
it was time for a traveller to retire." 

A pleasant picture Colonel Byrd has left 
us of this good soldier and statesman, 
whom he calls the Tubal Cain of Virginia. 
discussing a bowl of " rack punch" and his 
iron-making %\ith the master of Westover. 
or perchance unfolding to him his scheme 
for reducing the mail communication be- 
tween Williamsburg and Philadelphia to 
eight days !* Colonel Byrd is disposed to 
rally the dought}- warrior upon his great 

* Alexander Spotswood was Deputy Postmaster Gen- 
eral for the Colonies from 1730 to 1739, and it was 
through his influence that Benjamin Franklin was ap- 
pointed Postmaster for Pennsylvania. 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 8/ 

domesticity and devotion to Lady Spots- 
wood, " rubbing up his memory" upon the 
opposite maxims which he was wont to 
preach before he was married, to which the 
Governor repHes, Hke the gallant gentle- 
man that he is, " that whoever brings a 
poor gentlewoman into so solitary a place 
from all her friends and acquaintances, 
would be ungrateful not to use her with all 
possible tenderness." 

Although Colonel Byrd is occasionally 
inclined to sharpen his wits at the expense 
of the fair sex, remarking of the conversa- 
tion of the ladies at Germanna that it was 
" like whip syllabub, very pretty, but had 
nothing in it," while he discouragingly 
alludes to Mrs. Chiswell as one of those 
" absolute rarities, a very good old woman," 
and makes jokes that seem unsuited to so 
courteous a gentleman upon Miss Theky 
and her maiden state, which he describes 
her as bewailing daily in a beautiful bower 
upon Governor Spotswood's plantation, 
he is quite ready to enjoy a Michaelmas 
goose of the spinster's raising, and to find 
much satisfaction in " the good company 



SS COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

of Mrs. Byrd and her little governor, my 
son." 

Those were days of unsavor>' witticisms, 
and Colonel Byrd ^^•as only following the 
example of some of the elegant gentlemen 
with whom he had associated while com- 
pleting his education in England. ^Ir. John 
Dunton, who visited Boston a little earlier, 
\\'as capable of making remarks upon the 
women whom he met that were worthy a 
countr\-man of the caustic Pepys, although 
liis pen-pictures are usually flattering. Mrs. 
Stewart's face, at thirty-three, he finds " a 
magazine of beaut\- from whence she may 
fetch artiller}- enough to wound a Thousand 
Lovers," which makes his disapprobation 

of Mrs. D.. Doll S . and others stand 

out in stronger colors. The latter he calls 
" a perpetual contradiction, made up of I 
will and I ^vill not ;" while of another dame, 
whose name he prudently omits, he ob- 
serves that '* she takes as much state upon 
her, as wou'd have serv'd six of Queen 
Elizabeth's Countesses ; and yet she's no 
Lady neither. . . . She seldom appears 
twice in a shape ; but ever)- time she goes 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 89 

abroad, puts on a different Garb. Had 
she been with the Israelites in the Wilder- 
ness, when for forty years their Cloaths 
wax'd not old, it had been punishment 
enough for her, to have gone so long in 
one fashion." 

Fashion had certainly made great strides 
since the days of the early settlement if a 
woman could thus often change her " garb 
and shape." Judge Sewall might well 
bewail the advance into favor of the de- 
spised periwig, and if he one day experi- 
ences a melancholy pleasure in recording 
the fact that a periwig-maker and barber 
has died the death of a drunkard, he is 
pained soon after to hear Mr. Mather, in his 
pulpit, inveigh against those who " strain 
at a Gnat and swallow a Camel," who are 
" zealous against an innocent fashion, taken 
up and used by the best of men ; and yet 
make no conscience of being guilty of great 
Immoralities." " 'Tis supposed means wear- 
ing a Perriwig," says Sewall. " I expected 
not to hear a vindication of Perriwigs in 
Boston pulpit by Mr. Mather." Nor per- 
haps did Mr. Sewall expect to see in his 
8* 



go COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

own town of Salem a glaring advertise- 
ment of elaborate wigs and coiffures for 
both sexes. Even in Quaker Pennsylvania 
such innovations began to obtain in the 
next century, as we find Lewis Fay and 
Louis Duchateau informing the public, 
through the journals of the day, that they 
were qualified to " dress Ladies in fifty 
different manners with their own natural 
hair," while those ladies who had not 
sufficient hair of their own, or were sub- 
ject to headache, were consoled with the 
promise that they could be " dressed with 
false curls so well as not to be distin- 
guished from their natural ones." These 
accomplished artists also assured their pa- 
trons that they " set on brilliants or flow- 
ers to the greatest advantage," and, not to 
neglect the adornment of the sterner sex. 
engaged "to dress Gentlemen's hair in 
thirty fashionable and different manners 
agreeable to their faces and airs." 

This sounds like gayety and frivolity ; yet 
although the dignified men in satin coats 
and lace ruffles who look down upon this 
generation from the canvases of Black- 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 9 1 

burn, Smibert, his pupil John Copley,* and 
from those of Stuart, West, Peale, and 
Trumbull, were very elegant gentlemen, 
they were also industrious. God-fearing 
men and law-abiding citizens. The ladies, 
their pendants upon the wall, if they were 
grandes dames in a certain sense, and upon 
gala days appeared stiff and elegant in 
their brocades and satins, with hair tower- 
ing high or tortured into innumerable curls 
and rings, were far from frivolous as a rule, 

* In none of his paintings does Gjpley more fully 
display the grace and breadth of treatment which were 
the distinguishing characteristics of his best work than 
in the group of his own family. In this picture Mrs. 
Copley leans forward to caress her boy, whose hand 
is laid confidingly upon his mother's cheek, while the 
little maid in the foreground presents a charming com- 
bination of childish innocence and dignity. This paint- 
ing possesses a more than ordinary historic interest, as 
the older gentleman standing near Mr. Copley, his father- 
in-law, is the Mr. Richard Clarke who refused to return 
the tea consigned to him in 1774, and may thus, in a 
certain sense, be considered the originator of the Boston 
tea party, the boy whom Mrs. Copley bends over is the 
future Lord Chancellor of England, and the little girl, 
Elizabeth, is looked upon with interest by many Bos- 
tonians as their ancestress, Mrs. Gardiner Greene. 



92 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

and if an occasional ball or play diversified 
the monotony of their days, the majority of 
them were spent as Mr. Swanwick describes 
the excellent Maria spending hers : 

"No gadding frenzy takes her choice, 
But strictly ruled by reason's voice 
She finds no bliss to roam. 
***** 
No hideous dress this fair one wears, 
Not fashions but a mother's cares 
Engross her every hour." 

Indeed, domesticity was a necessity as 
well as a virtue in Colonial and Provincial 
life, and while, as Mr. Dunton remarked 
of Mrs. William Stewart, of Boston, " Her 
pride was to be Neat and Cleanly, and her 
thrift not to be Prodigal, which made her 
seldom a non-resident of her household," 
the Southern matron gathered her slaves 
about her and instructed them in cooking, 
sewing, and all domestic arts. The woman 
of the olden time was skilled in the use of 
her needle, in embroidery, lace-making, and 
all manner of fine needle-work. Little 
Miss Swift wrote from Boston to her papa 
and mamma in Philadelphia of spending 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 93 

hours at her " Tam Bar frame," while a 
pretty picture has come down to us of the 
young girls sitting out upon Boston Com- 
mon in the afternoon with their spinning- 
wheels before them, industry being the 
fashion in Colonial days. A not unat- 
tractive scene this to the traveller, who 
was taken to witness the latest Boston 
device for combining the useful and the 
beautiful ! " The Government being in the 
hands of Dissenters they don't admit of 
Plays, or Musick - houses," wrote Mr. 
Bennet, but here is a series of attractive 
tableaux vivants en plein air, bevies of girls 
laying their hands to the spindle, Hke 
King Solomon's model housewife, or as 
Mr. Longfellow pictured the captivating 
maiden of Plymouth : 

•' Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a 
snow-drift 

Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the raven- 
ous spindle, 

WTiile, her foot on the treadle, she guided the wheel 
in its motion." 

These girls doubtless covered them- 
selves with what good Mr. Whitefield called 



94 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" The Pride of Life," and indulged in as 
much innocent rivalry over caps and gowns 
as over the number of hanks of flax and 
Wool spun, for young people seemed to 
be young even in New England, and quite 
as tender glances of sweethearts could be 
exchanged over spinning-wheels as in the 
pauses of the dance in gayer circles. 

A descendant of Thomas Jefferson's 
Belinda writes of the Virginia lady of the 
olden time, " Very little from books was 
thought necessary for a girl. She was 
trained to domestic matters, however, must 
learn the accomplishments of the day, to 
play upon the harpsichord or spinet, and 
to work impossible dragons and roses on 
canvas." Bits of embroidery still pre- 
served testify to the skill of olden-time 
ladies. Mrs. Washington was a notable 
needlewoman, and paintings on velvet and 
satin, and pictures executed in silk and 
chenille by her grand - daughter, Nellie 
Custis, prove that she was an adept in such 
girlish accomplishments. Nor was the busy 
needle applied to ornamental work alone ; 
it was far more useful than the pen, and 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 95 

almost as powerful as the sword, in those 
days of early home-making. Mr. Thomas 
Nelson Page, in his charming retrospective 
study of Virginia life, tells us how, when 
her husband complained of the gate being 
broken, the industrious mistress of the 
household promptly replied, " Well, my 
dear, if I could sew it with my needle and 
thread, I would mend it for you." 

The olden-time girl, except in the home 
of the Puritan and the Quaker, was taught 
to dance as well as to use her needle, and 
in the Southern Colonies the former ac- 
complishment was considered so important 
a part of the education of a young lady 
that Mr. Jefferson insisted that his daugh- 
ter Martha should dance three days in 
the week, from eleven until one. Dr. 
Franklin also expressed great interest in 
Sally's dancing and playing upon the 
harpsichord, although he stipulated that 
she should improve her mind by reading 
"The Whole Duty of Man" and "The 
Young Lady's Library." That less in- 
structive literature than this sometimes 
fell into the hands of the Colonial maiden, 



96 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

we learn from the diaries of Lucinda of 
Virginia and Sarah Eve. The former 
takes herself to task for being so fond of 
novel-reading, while Miss Eve pronounces 
" The Fashionable Lover" a prodigious 
fine comedy. 

In addition to her lighter accomplish- 
ments the Colonial lady was an excellent 
housekeeper, in days when housekeeping 
meant having everj-thing prepared under 
the supervision of the mistress of the home, 
from the cutting up of the pork and beef 
until the culminating moment when the 
sausages and mince pies appeared upon the 
table. There were in many of the old 
houses retinues of servants, and in the 
Middle and Southern Colonies slaves to do 
the bidding of the mistress, but everything 
had to be superintended by her ; conse- 
quently in some of the old letters that 
come to us we find numerous homely 
domestic details, and great rejoicing over 
any small luxury or labor-saving device 
that found its way into the hands of the 
busy cJiatelaine. When travellers wrote 
of sumptuous dinners in hospitable South- 



WOMEN IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 9/ 

ern homes, or when Mr. William Black 
told how he was feasted in Annapolis, or 
when Silas Deane described an elaborate 
dinner at the house of Miers Fisher in 
Philadelphia, they little knew what the 
preparation and arrangement of such a 
menu meant to the mistress of the house- 
hold, in days when she could not send 
around the comer for the latest device 
in confectioner)^ with which to grace her 
board, and when the syllabubs and cus- 
tards were often prepared by the same 
dainty hands that served them to her 
guests. 

A pleasant story is told of Mrs. Clement 
Biddle, a worthy descendant of pioneer 
women of Rhode Island. Mrs. Biddle was 
with her husband in the Valley Forge en- 
campment, and when an order was issued 
that the officers' wives should leave the 
camp, she, with ready tact and skill, pre- 
pared so delectable a dinner for General 
Washington and his staff that the order 
was not carried out in her case, showing 
that the heroes of the Revolution were not 
insensible to the seductions of such good 
= ^ 9 



98 



COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 



cheer as a notable Philadelphia housewife 
knew how to set before the masculine de- 
vourer. The story' runs that as Mrs. Biddle 
rose from the table, she airily remarked 
that she had heard of the order, but felt 
sure that the General would not apply it to 
her, to which charmingly feminine speech 
the Commander-in-Chief, bo%\'ing low, re- 
plied, " Certainly not to Mrs. Biddle." 



,/<^^ 








A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. 

Among the early settlers of the Colonies 
there was, occasionally, a woman of more 
than ordinary intelligence, and now and 
again a ready writer or a verse-maker. 
Perhaps in all the settlements, North and 
South, there was no woman equal in mind 
and spirit to Anne Hutchinson, whom even 
her enemies acknowledged to be " a mas- 
terpiece of woman's wit." 

Enthusiasm, unrestrained by tact or 
worldly considerations, a strain of head- 
strongness in her religious fervor, and a 
power of carrying with her the minds and 
hearts of her hearers, were apparently the 
leading characteristics of this devoted 
young woman, the latter trait being per- 
haps the most difficult for her persecutors 
to overlook. From the grim travesty of 

99 



lOO COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

that trial in which Winthrop, Dudley, Endi- 
cott, and other worthies, who had come to 
the New World for freedom of thought and 
action, sat in judgment upon one against 
whom the only charge made was that she 
exercised this coveted freedom in her life 
and teaching, we turn with a mingled sense 
of shame and regret, — shame that men who 
had come hither for such high purposes 
could stoop to deeds so unworthy, and 
regret that a creature of such noble 
spirit should have been so misunderstood. 
Had Anne Hutchinson found her way to 
America half a century later, with the fol- 
lowers of Penn, we can readily imagine the 
career of usefulness and honor that would 
have opened for her. 

The more tolerant doctrine of the inner 
light found no place in the spiritual furni- 
ture of those who had shaken off the iron 
hand of a State Church, and when we 
look back upon the dealings of the early 
Puritans with one another it seems as if 
the rule that " might makes right" was as 
stoutly maintained in New England as in 
the feudal Hfe of older England. 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. 101 

In the same community that condemned 
and banished Anne Hutchinson for her 
teaching of " dangerous doctrine,"* we find 
another attractive womanly personality, 
Anne Bradstreet, who is spoken of in the 
first London edition of her poems as " The 
Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in Amer- 
ica," t but who is dearer to us as our first 
poetess, singing like a lark in the chill New 
England morn. Her verses we may not 
care to read now ; although they are char- 
acterized by considerable poetic thought 
and by some graces of poetic treatment, 
besides bearing marks of an early acquaint- 
ance with the great English writers of the 
past centur}^, some of whom were still liv- 
ing while little Anne Dudley was " lisping 

* " Mrs. Hutchinson's custom seems to have been to 
report the discourses of Mr. John Cotton, and to impress 
their lessons upon her hearers. In the progress of the 
discussion the sermons of other ministers were com- 
mented upon, and finally her own views presented." — 
Memorial History of Boston, iv. 334. 

f The poetess is also spoken of by an English ad- 
mirer as " Mistress Anne Bradstreet, at present residing 
in the Occidental parts of the world in America, alias 
Nov-Anglia." 

9* 



I02 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

in numbers," if dealing in numbers at all. 
To uncongenial surroundings and houses 
ill fitted to protect the settlers from the 
bleak winds and storms of a New England 
winter came Mrs. Bradstreet, from an Eng- 
lish home of the better class, which, if 
boasting few of the luxuries of to-day, was 
sufficiently comfortable in its appointments 
to form a strong contrast to the dwellings 
of the early settlers of Massachusetts. 
Sensitive, delicately nurtured, her mind 
always in advance of her frail body, her 
first American experiences being the ill- 
ness and death of her friend and fellow- 
voyager, the lovely Lady Arbella Johnson, 
and the drowning of young Henry Win- 
throp, it is not strange that one of Mrs. 
Bradstreet's earliest poems should have 
been upon " A Fit of Sickness," nor that 
it should have been followed a few months 
later by a joyous outburst of song upon 
the approach of spring : 

" As spring the winter doth succeed, 

And leaves the naked trees doe dresse, 
The earth all black is cloth'd in green ; 
At sunshine each their joy expresse. 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. IO3 

" My winters past, my stormes are gone, 
And former cloudes seem now all fled ; 
But, if they must eclipse again, 
I'll run where I was succored." 

What this first spring must have been to 
these pilgrims when they beheld the gray 
hill-sides and snow-bound valleys covered 
with verdure and bloom, and " replenished 
with thick woods and high trees," we learn 
from the expressions of that quaint and 
amusing chronicler, Francis Higginson. 

Disposed to make the best of every- 
thing, this worthy divine rejoiced alike over 
the trials and hardships that were good for 
his soul, and the dainty springs, luscious 
lobsters, and sweet and wholesome bass 
that sustained his mortal body, finding here 
an " increase of come, which proved this 
country to be a wonderment, which outstript 
Joseph's increase in Egypt." Yet, great as 
was this increase, it was not sufficient to 
outlast the long stagnation of the winter, 
when the cold was so great that Judge 
Sewall tells of the sacramental bread being 
frozen upon the plate, and when Judge 
Lynde was in the habit of driving across 



I04 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Penny's ferry on the ice. A realization 
of what was suffered by the youngest 
members of the community is emphasized 
by the sight of a pair of christening mit- 
tens worn in his babyhood by an early 
governor of Massachusetts, which were 
certainly needed in churches where fire 
was unknown, — except perhaps as a figure 
of speech in the pulpit. 

" The bright and at times almost tropi- 
cal summers of New England must have 
been the salvation of the colonists," says 
Mr. Lodge. " Nothing else broke the 
gloom. There were absolutely no amuse- 
ments of any kind, and although establish- 
ing great political and religious principles 
and founding States are the noblest tasks 
to which men can set their hands, yet 
poor humanity requires some relaxation. 
Nature's winter was severe, but it lasted 
only for a season, while the social winter 
was never broken until the whole system 
began to give way in the next century." 

From this chilling atmosphere, Anne 
Bradstreet wrote, at the age of nine- 
teen, — 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. IO5 

" Twice ten years old not fully told since nature gave me 
breath, 
My race is run, my thread is spun, lo ! here is fatal 
Death." 

That her race was not run, and that Mrs. 
Bradstreet lived to be more than three 
times nineteen, and the happy mother of 
eight children, does not detract from the 
pathos of these youthful lines. 

Whatever gifts may have been Anne 
Bradstreet's possession, we may believe 
that they had small space for expansion 
in a community that fed with avidity upon 
such mental pabulum as " The Simple 
Cobbler of Agawam," and later upon 
Wigglesworth's " Day of Doom," with 
its descriptions, worthy the advanced real- 
ist of to-day. In the latter work the 
author descants upon the sufferings of 
the condemned and of the unelect in- 
fants, who, although assured that their 
sins were not equal to those of the hard- 
ened reprobate, were told, poor babes, 
that for the crime of coming into this 
world at all, there apparently being no 
other, — 



I06 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" Therefore in bliss 
You may not hope to dwell ; 
But unto you I shall allow 
The easiest room in hell." 

That Mrs. Bradstreet should have risen 
above the depressing influence of her life 
and surroundings enough to sing at all is 
sufficient wonder, not that her notes should 
have been tinged with the melancholy of 
the prevailing atmosphere. It is to be re- 
gretted that she did not more frequently 
turn from the introspective studies that 
engaged her pen, and from such time-worn 
themes as the Four Seasons, the Four Ele- 
ments, and Ancient Monarchies, to de- 
scribe events and impressions belonging to 
the new life around her. This was a time 
when some picturesque personalities were 
abroad, and if the persecutions of Quakers 
and other independent thinkers have pre- 
sented scenes sufficiently stirring to arouse 
the fancy of later poets and dramatists, it 
seems strange that they failed to inspire 
this most sensitive and imaginative woman. 

It should perhaps be remembered that 
those were days when women were less 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. IO7 

accustomed to giving their opinions upon 
public matters than now, while another 
and a stronger reason for Mrs. Brad- 
street's silence upon these burning ques- 
tions is to be found in the fact that Gov- 
ernor Dudley and Simon Bradstreet were 
both engaged in the trials of Anne Hutch- 
inson and of the Quakers, the latter, be it 
said to his credit, with far less malignity 
than the former.* Although Anne Brad- 
street's loyalty to her father and husband 
seems to have kept her pen silent when 
her spirit must often have rebelled, she 
had enough vigor left in her frail body 
to utter her protest against the carping 
tongues that thought a needle fitted her 
hand better than a pen, vindicating her 
woman's right to be a poet by quoting the 
Greeks, whose muses nine were embodied 
in woman's form, 

" And poesy made Calliope's own child." 

When Mrs. Bradstreet touches upon nature 
and life, as she occasionally does in " Con- 

* For some incidents in Mrs. Bradstreet's life we 
are indebted to Helen Campbell's charming study of 
" Anne Bradstreet and Her Times." 



I08 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

templations," and in her few domestic 
poems, she reveals a much finer Hterary 
quality, besides giving the reader a glimpse 
of her tender nature and passionate woman's 
heart. During one of Governor Bradstreet's 
enforced absences from their Ipswich home 
his wife wrote, — 

" My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, my more. 
My joy, my Magazine of earthly store. 
If two be one as surely thou and I, 
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lye ?" 

Again she says, — 

"As Loving Hind (Hartless) wants her Deer, 
Scuds through the woods and Fern with hearkening 

ear, 
Perplext in every bush and nook doth pry. 
Her dearest Deer might answer ear or eye." 

It is pleasant to know that if Mrs. Brad- 
street likened herself to his " Hind," his 
" Mullet," and his " Dove," Simon Brad- 
street was in some measure worthy of his 
wife's devotion, being far more liberal- 
minded and kindly by nature than were 
most of those who surrounded him, and a 
personable man withal, if one may judge 
from his portrait. His affection for his 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. IO9 

wife was so strong that after her death in 
1675 he remained a widower for three 
years, a long period of mourning for a 
wife in Puritan New England. 

One of Mrs. Bradstreet's poems, in which 
she describes her children as " eight birds 
hatcht in one nest," is suggestive of Chaucer 
in its quaint simplicity and in the writer's 
skilful handling of homely details. This 
poem was written some years after the 
Brad.streets removed to Andover, and is, 
as Mrs. Campbell says, a sort of family 
biography. Some of the older children 
were married and settled in their own 
homes, while the younger ones still 
" nested" with their mother. In view of 
her eldest son's leaving home, Mrs. Brad- 
street beseeches him to 

" Fly back and sing amidst this Quire," 

while the little ones, still in the nest, she 
thus admonishes with tender bird-mother 
solicitude : 

" Alas, my birds, you wisdome want, 
Of perils you are ignorant ; 
Oft times in grass, on trees, in flight, 
Sore accidents on you may light." 
10 



no COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

Through the entire poem, which is quite 
long, the writer never drops or mixes her 
figures, even when she recounts the dan- 
gers to which her brood is likely to be 
exposed, as in the lines, — 

" If birds could weep, then would my tears 
Let others know what are my fears 
Lest this my brood some harm should catch. 
And be surpriz'd for want of watch, 
Whilst pecking corn, and void of care 
They fall un'wares in Fowler's snare; 
Or whilst on trees they sit and sing, 
Some untoward boy at them do fling ; 
Or whilst allur'd with bell and glass, 
The net be spread, and caught, alas. 
Or least by Lime-twigs they be foyl'd, 
Or by some greedy hawks be spoyl'd. 
O, would my young, ye saw my breast. 
And knew what thoughts there sadly rest. 
Great was my pain when I you bred, 
Great was my care when I you fed. 
Long did I keep you soft and warm. 
And with my wings kept off all harm." 

If this mother, whose heart was filled 
with such trembling solicitude for the 
future of her brood, could have realized 
that from the home-nest at Andover were 
to descend such lights in literature and 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. Ill 

theology as the Channings, the Danas, 
Wendell Phillips, and Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, the strain with which she closed 
her poem might have been more exultant, 
but could have been no more earnest : 

" Thus gone, amongst you I may live, 
And dead, yet speak, and counsel give ; 
Farewel, my birds farewel, adieu, 
I happy am, if well v?ith you." 

Another New England poetess, of a 
much later date, was Mercy Warren, 
daughter of James Otis, of Barnstable, 
and wife of James Warren, sometime 
President of the Provincial Congress of 
Massachusetts.* This lady, whom her 
friend Mrs. Winthrop addressed as Philo- 
mela, wrote a number of poems and trage- 
dies abounding in the classical allusions 

* George Sandys was writing verses and translating 
Ovid on the banks of the James ten years before Anne 
Bradstreet came to Massachusetts. Yet in the years 
that followed, the muse of poetry was more prone to 
frequent the New England Colonies than those of Vir- 
ginia and Maryland, although no more inspiring themes 
could be found than histories as romantic as that of 
Evelyn Byrd, and faces as beautiful as those of Mary 
Randolph, Anne Francis, and Dorothy Blake. 



112 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

SO common at that time. Political reveries 
in verse also engaged her pen, and spirited 
attacks upon the manners and customs of 
the day, in which 

" India's poisonous weed, 
Long since a sacrifice to Thetis made," 

came in for a full share of her keen satire. 
Mrs. Warren also left a number of admi- 
rable pen-pictures of the great men of the 
day, clear, sharp, and well drawn. It is 
interesting to learn from one of her letters, 
written during the encampment at Cam- 
bridge, that she considered General Wash- 
ington "the most amiable and accom- 
plished gentleman both in person, mind 
and manners that she has ever met with," 
and equally so to know that her first im- 
pression of Charles Lee was far less favor- 
able, and that she found him, with all his 
learning and ability, "plain in his person 
to a degree of ugliness and careless even 
to unpoliteness." 

Nor were the visits of the muse con- 
fined to the Colonial and Provincial women 
of New England, as we learn that down 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. I 1 3 

in Pennsylvania Elizabeth Fergusson was 
composing poetry about the same time as 
Mrs. Warren, while Mrs. Deborah Logan, 
a little later, was writing both prose and 
verse, the former destined to survive the 
latter, not only because it was more ex- 
cellent, but also because it gives us pic- 
tures of the times, a form of composition 
whose value, like wine, increases with the 
years. Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, 
a grand-daughter of the first Isaac Norris, 
and Mrs. Richard Stockton were among 
our early poetesses. The latter, born 
Annis Boudinot, a New Jersey woman, 
composed verses upon " Peace," upon 
" The Surrender of Cornwallis," and a 
triumphal ode to the Commander-in-Chief 
The letters in which Washington thanked 
Mrs. Stockton for these patriotic poems 
are among the most charming and play- 
ful to be found in his correspondence, 
and, if somewhat more ponderous than 
similar effusions in our day, are interesting 
as illustrations of what the great man 
could do upon occasions when fancy held 
the rein. The poetess modestly sent a 

h lo* 



114 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

line of apology with her verses, to which 
the hero who inspired her muse thus 
rephed : 

" You apply to me, my dear madam, for absolution, 
as though I was your father confessor, and as though 
you had committed a crime great in itself, yet of the 
venial class. You have reason good ; for I find myself 
strangely disposed to be a verj" indulgent ghostly adviser 
upon this occasion, and notwithstanding ' you are the 
most offending soul alive' (that is, if it is a crime to write 
elegant poetry), yet if you will come and dine with me 
on Thursday, and go through the proper course of peni- 
tence which shall be prescribed, I will strive hard to 
assist you in expiating these poetical trespasses on this 
side of purgator)'." 

Mr, and Mrs. Stockton were evidently 
a most congenial and devoted couple. In 
their letters they frequently addressed each 
other as " Lucius" and " Emilia," after 
the fanciful custom of the day. Some of 
these letters, written while Mr. Stockton 
was in London in 1766, engaged with Dr. 
Franklin in furthering the interests of the 
Colonies, give us pleasing glimpses of the 
wife, as seen through glasses that were 
prone to magnify rather than to diminish 
her charms. Mrs. Stockton had declined 
to accompany her husband abroad, because 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. I I 5 

she was unwilling to leave her children, or, 
as she expressed it, she felt " no particular 
call of Providence to venture both their 
parents in one bottom," and in all Mr. 
Stockton's letters, whether describing the 
royalties or such notable political figures 
as Chatham and Grenville, or in preparing 
for his wife a plan of Mr. Pope's gardens 
and grotto at Twickenham, there runs a 
thread of regret that one so fitted by taste 
and cultivation to appreciate Old World 
sights and sounds should not be enjoying 
them with him. After descanting upon 
the glories of the queen's birthnight ball, 
which was opened by some of the royalties 
and graced by the presence of the Duch- 
esses of Bolton, Ancaster, Hamilton, and 
all the other famous beauties, he concludes, 
" But here I have done with the subject, 
for I had rather wander with you along 
the rivulets of Morven or Red Hill, and 
see the rural sports of the chaste little 
frogs, than again be at a birthnight ball." 
In another letter, Lucius speaks of his 
Emilia's poems, desiring her to send him 
some of the pieces he most admired, adding. 



Il6 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" I shall like much to have them to spell 
over for my amusement on my passage 
home." Although Mrs. Stockton was very 
modest about her effusions, and shrank 
from the notoriety of print, Mrs. Fergusson 
speaks of her, in one of her own poems, 
as the writer of many pleasing verses : 

" Here flow the good Emilia's strains 
In Morven's rural bowers." 

One of Mrs. Stockton's daughters, Julia, 
married the distinguished Dr. Benjamin 
Rush, and another, Mary, became the wife 
of Andrew Hunter, of Virginia, who was 
publicly thanked by General Washington 
for his gallant service in the battle of Mon- 
mouth, 

Elizabeth Fergusson did not write patri- 
otic verses, as she was allied by birth and 
marriage with the Tory side of the ques- 
tion, being the grand-daughter of Lady 
Anne Keith,* second wife of Sir William 

* Mrs. Fergusson was not the grand-daughter of Sir 
William Keith, as has been so often stated, but of his 
wife. By her first husband, Robert Diggs, Lady Keith 
had a daughter Anne, who married Dr. Thomas Graeme, 
of Philadelphia. 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. 11/ 

Keith, Penn's last deputy governor, and 
the wife of Hugh Fergusson, British Com- 
missioner of Prisoners. 

The story of Mrs. Fergusson having, in 
the early days of the Revolution, been a 
medium of communication between Gover- 
nor Johnson and the American authorities, 
with a view to the bringing about of peace 
negotiations, is well known, and yet her part 
in the affair has never been thoroughly 
understood. She says that she " looked upon 
Governor Johnson as a friend to America 
who wished some person to step forth and 
act a mediatorial part, and suggest some- 
thing to stop the effusion of blood which 
was likely to ensue if the war was carried 
on in full vigor." We can understand that 
Mrs. Fergusson's humanity, aside from any 
Tory proclivities, would naturally lead her 
to desire to bring about such a consumma- 
tion ; but that a woman of her mind and 
character should have allowed herself, 
with her eyes open, to engage in a trans- 
action in which ten thousand guineas and a 
good post in the British government were 
offered to an American general in reward 



Il8 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

for his services, is difficult to explain. We 
can do no better than accept Mrs. Fer- 
gusson's own interpretation of the matter, 
and conclude that she was ignorant of the 
grosser details of the transaction, and 
thought only of the desired result. " I 
own," she says in one place, " I find it 
hard, knowing the uncorruptness of my 
own heart, to be held out to the public 
as a tool to the commissioners. But the 
impression is now made, and it is too late 
to recall it." Much of the unpleasantness 
of the association of this affair with her 
nanie, Mrs. Fergusson was able to dispel 
later by her own narrative, prepared as 
a refutation of Governor Johnson's state- 
ments. The fact also that so patriotic a 
contemporary' as Dr. Rush spoke with 
unqualified praise of the woman, as well 
as of the writer, leads us to believe that 
Mrs. Fergusson's motives were under- 
stood and respected by those who knew 
her best. 

From this rather involved page of per- 
sonal history it is pleasant to turn to an 
earlier phase of this woman's life, when, as 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. II9 

the young daughter of Dr. Thomas Graeme, 
she assisted her father and mother to dis- 
pense the charming hospitahty that ren- 
dered Graeme Park * a favorite resort of the 
cultivated men and women of the day, or 
amid its lovely groves composed the verses 
that made her one of the foremost Ameri- 
can poets of her time. Miss Graeme's 
tastes were distinctly literary. In addition 
to her original poems, she translated Tel- 
emachus into English verse, while of her 
prose writings Dr. Rush wrote that they 
indicated " strong marks of genius, taste, 
and knowledge. Nothing," he says, " that 
came from her pen was common ;" to 
which a no less capable critic than Mr. 
Joshua Francis Fisher added his meed of 
praise. 

Although Miss Graeme, under the 
pseudonyme of " Laura," sometimes in- 
dulged in elegiac strains, and, like most 

* Graeme Park is in Montgomery County, about nine- 
teen miles from Philadelphia; the land on which the 
house was built was originally owned by Samuel Car- 
penter. Dr. Thomas Graeme bought the estate from 
Sir William Keith. 



I20 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

young poets, sighed for sadness and soli- 
tude, choosing for her retreat 

" Some moss-grown cave, 
Where oozing creeping waters flow," 

a delicate humor marks many of her 
verses, especially those that resulted 
from her friendship with the Rev. Na- 
thaniel Evans, In 1764, Miss Graeme 
sailed for Europe with the Rev. Richard 
Peters, rector of Christ Church, Philadel- 
phia, in whose care she had been placed 
by her parents. While in London the 
young poetess met many persons of dis- 
tinction, among others the celebrated Dr. 
John Fothergill, who became her friend as 
well as her physician. Calling to see her 
one March day in 1765, Dr. Fothergill 
exclaimed, " Yesterday you were made a 
slave of, Betsey," to which she, girl-like, 
suspecting some raillery on the subject 
of matrimony, replied, " No, sir, I am a 
slave to no man ; my heart is my own." 
" No, no, heart has nothing to do with 
it," said the doctor, explaining that he re- 
ferred to the passage of the Stamp Act, 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. 121 

which made her and her countrymen slaves 
of Great Britain. 

On her return voyage Miss Graeme met 
the Rev. Nathaniel Evans, between whom 
and herself there soon grew up a strong 
hking. Whether or not Miss Graeme's 
heart was involved in this friendship it is 
difficult to say. That Mr. Evans suc- 
cumbed to the charms of the young poet- 
ess his verses plainly revealed ; certainly 
his death, at the age of twenty-five, closed 
a chapter which left its impress upon her 
future career. Soon after his return from 
abroad, Mr. Evans, who was in delicate 
health, was advised by his kindly physi- 
cian, Dr. Graeme, to spend a part of the 
spring at Graeme Park ; hence the follow- 
ing verse : 

" Thus musing o'er the charming plains, 
Where Graeme the good and just retires, 
Where Laura breathes her tender strains. 
Where every graceful muse inspires." 

An attractive setting this for the pastoral 
of parson and poetess ! Even now Graeme 
Park has a charm of its own ; much more 
in Colonial days, when the fine old house, 



122 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

built by Governor Keith for his own resi- 
dence, and surrounded by three hundred 
acres of wooded park, double-ditched and 
hedged in approved English fashion, with 
sheep and cattle grazing upon its verdant 
slopes, was the pride of the neighborhood. 
Although the friendship destined to end 
so sadly began gayly enough with jesting 
and good-humored raillery, there is a 
deeper tone in the man's verses than in the 
w^oman's ; and if the rhymed badinage of 
this couple recalls to us, as it did to the 
writers themselves, the friendship of Swift 
and Stella, we must transpose our charac- 
ters, as in the case of the American pair it 
was the woman who carrried off the palm 
by the keenness and brilliancy of her satire. 
Swift cruelly reminded Stella that her 
dancing days were over, and, in verses ad- 
dressed to her upon her birthday, wondered 
how an angel would look at thirty-six ; but 
it was Miss Graeme, " Laura," who satirized 
some of her reverend friend's foibles so 
cleverly in her " Countr\' Parson" that he 
was quick to recognize his own portrait in 
the dominie of whom she wrote : 



A GROUP OF EARLY POETESSES. 1 23 

" Of manners gentle, and of temper even, 
He jogs his flock, with easy pace, to heaven. 
In Greek and Latin, pious books he keeps ; 
And, while his clerk sings psalms, he — soundly sleeps. 
His garden fronts the sun's sweet orient beams. 
And fat church- wardens prompt his golden dreams. 
From rustic bridegroom oft he takes the ring ; 
And hears the milk-maid plaintive ballads sing. 
Back-gammon cheats whole winter nights away, 
And Pilgrim's Progress helps a rainy day." 

These piquant lines, modelled after Mr. 
Pope's " Happy Life of a Country Parson," 
were received by young Evans thus good- 
humoredly : 

" I lately saw, no matter where, 
A parody by Laura fair; 
In which, beyond dispute, 'tis clear 
She means her country friend to jeer. 
For, well she knows, her pleasing lays, 
(Whether they banter me or praise, 
Whatever merry mood they take,) 
Are welcome for their author's sake." 

To this Laura promptly replied that the 
parson had no reason to flatter himself that 
he was the subject from which she had 
made her sketch ; and thus, the gage being 
thrown down, the merry war was waged 
through a number of sparkling verses. 



124 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

This graceful little idyl at Graeme Park 
affords a pleasing contrast to the public 
life of the time, when heated political dis- 
cussions upon the respective rights and 
wrongs of king and colonies were be- 
ginning to stir men's minds, North and 
South. Against the dark background of 
war and suffering soon to follow, it stands 
out in the clear spring air like a bit of Ar- 
cadia transported to the New World. So 
it must have appeared in the retrospect to 
Elizabeth Graeme, to whose later years 
many troubles came, whose marriage to 
Hugh Fergusson, against her father's 
wishes, seems to have brought her little 
happiness, and who solaced her lonely 
heart by her studies and translations, in- 
stead of, like Anne Bradstreet, stringing 
together rhymes upon children who gath- 
ered around her knees. 








COLONIAL DAMES. 

Mrs. Knowles, the ingenious Quaker 
lady who outwitted Dr. Johnson in more 
than one tilt of words, illustrated her 
theories upon the education of women 
by citing the happy consequences of a 
woman's understanding the reason for the 
bursting of a pudding-bag, describing her 
as she " calms her maids by learned dis- 
quisitions and proceeds to make a fresh 
pudding out of the mixture ; whereas the 
ignorant housewife thinks a hobgoblin is 
1 1* 125 



126 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

in the pot, and gets into a perfect state 
of flurr}'." 

Placing the question upon a higher 
ground than pudding-making, we find a 
Pennsylvania pedagogue, in 1765, pro- 
posing to teach young ladies " true spell- 
ing with the rules for pointing with pro- 
priety," urging upon them not to be 
discouraged on account of their age, or 
through fear of obtaining a spouse, as he 
has had " the honour to give the finishing 
stroke in education to several of the re- 
puted fine accomplished ladies in New 
York, some of which were married within 
two, three and four years afterwards." 
Truly the ambitious instructor proved his 
right to be patronized ! 

All through the days of the settlement, 
whether learned or unlearned, women had 
been proving the superiority of mind over 
matter by the ingenuity' and fertilit)' of 
resource with which they overcame diffi- 
culties and brought comfort out of chaos. 
From that early and solitary Virginia 
witch, Grace Sherwood, who outwitted 
her persecutors by swimming when she 



COLONIAL DAMES. 12/ 

was expected to sink, to the high-born 
and patriotic dames of North Carolina who 
banded themselves together to drink a 
decoction of raspberry leaves instead of tea 
until the odious tax should be taken off,* 
Colonial women faced perils and difficulties 
with unfailing heroism and patience. " To 
find a way or make one" seemed to be 
the motto of the hour. Danger developed 
latent courage, and emergency seemed to 
whet mother-wit to keener edge, as when 
Lydia Darrach set out upon her lonely walk 
through a country filled with the enemy's 
troops, or when Mrs. Philip Schuyler, hear- 
ing that the British soldiers were on their 

*This association, formed in October, 1774, was 
presided over by Mrs. Penelope Barker, and joined by 
Mrs. Elizabeth King, Mrs. Sarah Valentine, Miss Isa- 
bella Johnston, a sister of Governor Johnston, of North 
Carolina, Mrs. Iloskins, and forty-six other women, who 
signed a paper which read as follows : " We the Ladys 
of Edenton do hereby solemnly engage not to Conform 
to that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea, or that we 
'the aforesaid Ladys will not promote ye wear of any 
manufacture from England, untill such time that all 
Acts which tend to enslave our Native Country shall be 
repealed." — " The Historic Tea Party of Edenton," by 
Richard Dillard. 



128 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

way to Schuylerville to secure her absent 
husband's crop of grain, set fire to the 
fields with her own hands, rather than 
suffer such aid and comfort to fall to the 
share of the enemy ; or as when Madam 
Hancock ordered all the stray cows on the 
Common to be milked because the Hon- 
orable John brought home to breakfast a 
larger company of officers than her larder 
could supply. Equally clever and prompt 
to take advantage of the situation was 
the Widow Nice, who, when the British 
officers quartered upon her at the Rising 
Sun Tavern complained of the butter, 
remarked that she could probably get 
better if she had a horse to ride out into 
the country in search of it. Being pro- 
vided with a horse, the good lady took 
the precaution to secure some of her 
valuables in her saddle-bags, and, thus 
equipped, rode off upon her confiscated 
steed, to return no more until Philadelphia 
was in possession of the Continentals. 

Well might Abigail Adams write from 
her Braintree home, where she lived in 
constant dread of hostilities and was often 



COLONIAL DAMES. 1 29 

in want of the ordinary comforts of life, 
to her husband in Philadelphia, who was 
helping to " usher in the birth of a fine 
boy," as he playfully dubbed the Declara- 
tion of ''j6, — 

" And by the way in the new code of laws, which I 
suppose it would be necessary to make, I desire you to 
remember the ladies, and be more generous and favor- 
able to them than your ancestors were. Do not put 
such an unlimited power into the hands of the hus- 
bands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they 
could. If particular care and attention are not paid to 
the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and 
will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we 
have no voice or representation." 

Although these remarks produced no 
effect upon the worthy framers of the 
Declaration, in which respect they remind 
us of a number of similar manifestoes that 
have followed them, they are interesting 
because of their independence of spirit, 
showing from what quarter the wind blew 
in Boston even in early days. 

" If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, 
and philosophers, we should have learned 
women," writes Mrs. Adams upon another 



130 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

occasion, which looks as if she had already- 
grasped the favorite theory of the modern 
scientist, that great men are usually the 
sons of superior mothers. History has 
presented such meagre outlines of the 
mothers of the Republic that we turn to 
letters and diaries for the more intimate 
touches that reveal character and give the 
key-note to the situation ; as when we 
learn that Jane Randolph, the bride of 
Peter Jefferson, rode behind her husband 
to his pioneer home in the primeval forest, 
she having been bred in whatever luxury 
belonged to the Colonial life of Virginia ; 
or gather from family records some idea 
of the mingled austerity and affection of 
the home life of the young Washingtons. 
More than history reveals we wish to 
know of the mother who in girlhood was 
the belle of the countryside, but who in 
her early widowhood devoted all her time 
and thought to the training of her chil- 
dren and the management of the estate 
that had been left to them. 

Although Mary Washington and Abiah 
Franklin are chiefly known to later gen- 



COLONIAL DAMES. I3I 

erations as the mothers of great sons, it 
is evident that both of these women were 
possessed of strong character and distinct 
individuahty. Firmness, moderation, and 
deep religious sentiment were leading traits 
of Mrs. Washington ; while Mrs. Franklin, 
thrifty and hard-working, having at two- 
and-twenty undertaken Josiah Franklin 
with his brood of little children, which 
her own contribution of ten augmented 
to the goodly number of sixteen, still 
found time, like a true daughter of New 
England, to reflect upon theological ques- 
tions. Dr. Franklin says in one of his 
letters that his mother " grieves that one 
of her sons is an Arian and the other 
an Arminian, although what these terms 
mean I do not very well know." Mrs. 
Franklin probably knew what she meant, 
and was decided in her opinions, having 
been reared in an atmosphere of theologi- 
.cal discussion, her father, Peter Folger, 
being a scholar and a man far in advance 
of his time in religious thought. That 
the mother was not rigid in her ideas of 
life is evident from the freedom with which 



132 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

her son tells her of his own sayings and 
doings and of his daughter Sally's learn- 
ing to play the harpsichord and to dance. 
Writing to Dr. Franklin soon after his 
election to the Common Council of Phila- 
delphia, Mrs. Franklin begs him " to look 
up to God and thank him for all his good 
Providences," expressing her satisfaction 
that he is " so well respected in his town 
that they chose" him " an Alderman," add- 
ing, with a shrewdness not unlike her son's, 
"Altho' I don't know what it means, or 
what the better you will be of it besides 
the honor." 

A not unworthy daughter-in-law of the 
thrifty mistress of the Blue Ball was Deb- 
orah Reed, the wife of Benjamin Frank- 
lin, whose dignity, discretion, and great 
patience during the long absences abroad 
of her *' dear child" entitle her to the respect 
and admiration of those who revere her 
more brilliantly endowed husband. That 
she inspired both of these sentiments in 
the mind of the great philosopher is evi- 
dent from various expressions in his letters. 
Writing from London, in 1758, he says, — 



COLONIAL DAMES. 1 33 

" I also forgot, among the china, to mention a large 
fine jug for beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love 
with it at first sight ; for I thought it looked like a fat 
jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white 
calico gown on, good natured and lovely, and put me 
in mind of — somebody." 

This " somebody" appears again in some 
characteristic verses which the husband, 
not to be too chary of his poetic rhapso- 
dies, read to the Junto as well as to his 
wife: 

" Not a word of her face, of her shape, or her air, 
Or of flames, or of darts, you shall hear; 
I beauty admire, but virtue I prize, 
That fades not in seventy year. 

" Am I loaded with care, she takes off a large share. 
That the burden ne'er makes me to reel ; 
Does good fortune arrive, the joy of my wife 
Quite doubles the pleasure I feel. 

" She defends my good name, even when I'm to blame, 

Firm friend as to man e'er was given ; 

Her compassionate breast feels for all the distressed. 

Which draws down more blessings from heaven. 

******** 

" In peace and good order my household she guides. 
Right careful to save what I gain ; 
Yet cheerfully spends, and smiles on the friends 
I've the pleasure to entertain. 

12 



134 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" Some faults have we all, and so has my Joan, 
But then they're exceedingly small. 
And, now I'm grown used to them, so like my own 
I scarcely can see them at all." 

There are no complaints or repinings 
in Mrs. Franklin's letters to her husband, 
which make her references to his absences 
the more touching : 

" Since you do so kindly inquire what things I want, 
I will tell you that when Mrs. Franklin * c.ime to town 
and went to the assembly, Salley had nothing fit to 
wear suitable to wait on her ; and as I never should have 
put on in your absence anything good, I gave Salley 
my new robe as it wanted very little altering. I should 
be glad if you would bring me a plain satin gown," etc. 

After explaining some household ar- 
rangements, Mrs. Franklin exclaims, as 
if the words had escaped her involun- 
tarily, " O my child, there is great odds 
between a man's being at home and 
abroad ; as everybody is afraid they shall 
do wrong, so everything is left undone." 

Making due allowance for the extrava- 

* This was the wife of Governor Franklin, daughter- 
in-law of Dr. Franklin, whose tablet in St. Paul's Church, 
New York, records many virtues. 



COLONIAL DAMES. 1 35 

gance of the compliments which Mr. 
Black and Mr. Dunton were wont to lavish 
upon the fair sex, it is pleasant to learn 
from the former that the ladies of Annapo- 
lis and Philadelphia were as beautiful as 
the day, and adorned with all domestic 
charms, while we may believe that the 
Boston women possessed at least a portion 
of the graces with which Mr. Dunton 
endowed them. Of Mrs. Robert Breck, 
whom he designates as the " Flower of 
Boston," his " Chosen Exemplar of what 
a Widow is," he says, — 

" Madam Brick is a Gentlewoman whofe Head {i.e. 
her Husband) has been cut off, and yet she lives and 
Walks : But don't be frighted, for she's Flelh and 
Blood ftill, and perhaps fome of the fineft that you ever 
faw. She has fufficiently evidenced that her Love to 
her late Husband is as strong as Death, becaufe Death 
has not been able to Extinguifli it." 

After further extolling Madame Breck's 
high character, noble resignation, and 
beauty of person and carriage, which Mr. 
Dunton finds devoid of " the starch'dness 
usual amongst the Bostonians, who value 
themselves thereby so much, that they are 



136 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

ready to say to all others, Stand off, for I 
am holier than thou," he has the hardi- 
hood to confess that all these virtues and 
charms gave him 

" so just a value for her that Mrs. Green wou'd often 
say, Shou'd Iris Dye (which Heaven forbid) there's 
none was fit to succeed her but Madam Brick ; But 
Mrs. Green was partial, for my poor Pretences to secure 
vertue, wou'd ne'er have answer'd to her Towring 
heighths. 'Tis true, Madam Brick did me the Honour to 
treat me very kindly at her House, and to admit me often 
into her Converfation, but I am fure it was not on Love's, 
but on Vertue's score. For she well knows (at least as 
well as I do) that Iris is alive : And therefore I muft 
justifie her Innocence on that account. And tho' some 
have been pleas'd to say. That were I in a fingle ftate, 
they do believe she wou'd not be displeas'd with my 
Addresses, As this is without any ground but groundlefs 
Conjectures, so I hope I shall never be in a capacity to 
make a Tryal of it." * 

How Iris received these expressions the 
journal does not relate. There have been 

* This lady, whose name Mr. Dunton persistently 
wrote Brick, as it was pronounced, was the wife of 
Robert Breck, of the same family as the well-known 
Mr. Samuel Breck. Mrs. Breck's noble resignation, for 
which Mr. Dunton commends her, was further shown 
by her taking to herself a second husband, Michael 
Perry. 



COLONIAL DAMES. 13/ 

those who entertained the belief that Mr. 
Dunton's mind was disturbed; but, al- 
though he often sails close to the wind, 
he proves himself a good sailor by his 
prudence in preparing for rocks and shoals 
ahead, always prefacing his flattering re- 
marks upon the beauties of Boston by 
compliments to his wife, and assurances 
that the same charms were found in her, 
" as 'twere in a New Edition more Correct 
and enlarged: Or rather. Iris is that 
bright Original which all good Wives 
fhou'd imitate." 

Although there were few who could 
enter the lists with the incomparable 
Madam Breck, Colonel Byrd has left, in 
his diary of 1732, a characteristic sketch 
of a charming Southern widow, Sarah 
Syme, soon to become the wife of the 
young Scotchman, John Henry, and the 
mother of Patrick Henry : 

•' In the evening Tinsley conducted me to Mrs. Sym's 
house, where I intended to take up my quarters. This 
lady, at first suspecting that I was some lover, put on a 
gravity that becomes a weed ; but so soon as she learned 
who I was, brightened up into an unusual cheerfulness 
12* 



I3S COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

and serenity. She was a portly, handsome dame, of 
the family of Esau, and seemed not to pine too much 
for the death of her husband, who was of the family of 
the Saracens. This widow is a person of lively and 
cheerful conversation, with much less reserve than most 
of her countrj-women. It becomes her ver^- well and 
sets oft' her other agreeable qualities to advantage. We 
tossed oft' a bottle of honest Port, which we relished 
with a broiled chicken. At nine I retired to my de- 
votions, and then slept so sound that fancy itself was 
stupihed, else I should have dreamed of my most 
obliging landlady." 

In addition to whatever "gift of tongues" 
Patrick Henn* may have derived from his 
mother, he was, according to his latest 
biographer, entitled to an inheritance of 
eloquence upon his father's side, as his 
paternal ancestrj- and Lord Brougham's 
can be traced to a common stock. 

When full and detailed letters and dia- 
ries have been preser\-ed. as in the case of 
the Winthrops, Pembertons. Morrises, Lo- 
gans, Hopkinsons. Byrds, and others, we 
realize our privileges and scan with inter- 
est the quaint pictures of the period, sym- 
pathizing with Mrs. James Pemberton when 
she writes to her absent husband of the 



COLONIAL DAMES. 1 39 

British breaking into the plantation, burning 
her winter firewood, and trampling down 
her vegetable garden ; or entering into Mrs. 
Hopkinson's pleasure when her son Francis 
writes her of the cordial reception given 
him by his English relatives, Mrs. Hop- 
kinson belonged to the Johnsons and 
Hydes, the latter Queen Anne's people, 
and Francis Hopkinson's letters from 
abroad are full of interesting details of life 
at Hartlebury Castle, the residence of his 
cousin the Bishop of Worcester, of English 
sayings and doings, and of encountering 
the Wests and other friends in London, 

Mr, and Mrs. Benjamin West naturally 
entertained many Americans in their Eng- 
lish home. Mr, Shewell, a cousin of Mrs. 
West, upon his return from England re- 
lated numerous anecdotes of Mr. West's 
famous Sunday dinners, when Englishmen 
and distinguished countrymen of his own 
met around his hospitable board. " Mrs. 
West," he says, " was always American at 
heart, never losing her affection for her 
country and its customs. One day, while 
at dinner, a tall flunky placed a plate care- 



140 COLOXLU. D.W"^ AND DAMES. 

fulh" covered with a napkin bdbre Mrs. 
West ' Dont laugh at me. Cousin Tom !' 
she exclaimed, lifting the napkin and re- 
^■caling a collection of corn-cobs, * These 
are the result of my endea>x»r to grow 
green com in our hot-house; but I had 
tile cobs boiled to get the smell, anyhow.' " 
Mrs. West w^as a Philadelphia Quakeress, 
as was her kinswoman, the mother of L^gh 
HunL Of his mother's lo\-eliness of char- 
acter the po^ writes with oithusiasm. 
wiiile Mrs. West seems to ha\-e possessed 
a charm and \-i\-acit\- all ho" own. A 
painting by Benjamin West, receitiy dis- 
co\-ered in a femily g:arret, represents his 
wife with her child in her arms, the cos- 
tume and position e\-idently in imitation of 
the old masters. West was an earh- patror. 
of the \-oung<a' artist, John Singleton Cop- 
ley, whose star, titen rising, was destined 
to ed^>se that oi his patrcm. A quaint 
little sketch of Master Copl^* and his 

* TUs Ikde K>t v-i^ ifberinnis acade Lcsu Ltoc- 
kwsUMdvsstvioeLardCkuKeUQrof Ei^ud. His 
HiwHi^ltu, dke Hon. SofMft Qatitey, —iii.it Mr. HaMK 
tafB DolLcS^ ons iMioii^ aKcr SMay yens of KsracBC? 



COLONIAL DAMES. I4I 

sister is to be found among West's draw- 
ings, while the charming face of Mrs. Cop- 
ley appears in a number of her husband's 
paintings, especially in his Scriptural 
scenes. Mrs. Copley, like Mrs. West, 
was an ideal artist's wife, combining grace 
and beauty with strong New England com- 
mon sense and executive ability. To the 
brush of Copley we are indebted for such in- 
teresting portraits of Colonial women as that 
of the beautiful Lady Wentworth, in which 
appears the flying squirrel, which seems to 
have been as great a favorite with Copley 
as was the King Charles spaniel with Van 
Dyck ; and that of Mrs. Samuel Alleyne 
Otis, in the dress of a shepherdess, fair 
enough to have won the heart of any 
number of Florizels, and, like Perdita, to 
have draAvn her sheep to " leave grazing, 
and only live by gazing." 

Among Benjamin West's earlier por- 
traits is that of Mrs. Thomas Hopkinson, 
which now hangs in the rooms of the 



abroad, these two distinguished American famihes, the 
Hamiltons and the Copleys. 



142 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in the 
company of her son and her son's son, the 
latter, Joseph Hopkinson, author of " Hail 
Columbia," surrounded by fair daugh- 
ters and daughters-in-law. One of the 
most attractive figures in this group is 
Mary Hopkinson, wife of Dr. John Mor- 
gan. A lady in fanciful attire with a man- 
dolin in her hand — the Hopkinsons were 
then, as now, a musical race — is what the 
painting reveals, while from her numer- 
ous letters we can form some idea of the 
frank, observing, and vivacious young 
woman, of whom her husband writes to 
his mother-in-law in 1775, describing their 
journey from Philadelphia to Cambridge, — 

" Had Mrs. Morgan been a Princess she might have 
been received with Pomp and Magnificence, but not 
with a heartier welcome, were even her own Mamma, 
the Queen Mother, to receive us, than our relations 
have given us, both Mr. and Mrs. Qifford * and Mr. 



* Probably Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Clifford, whose 
country place, Rocky Point, on the Delaware, nearly 
opposite Burlington, was so frequently visited by those 
gay girls, the Misses Guest and Miss Sarah Eve. The 
Misses Guest were nieces of Mrs. Clifford. 



COLONIAL DAMES. 1 43 

and Mrs. Kirkbride. She is an excellent companion at 
all times, but if possible excells herself on the road. 
She is full of spirits. Our horses are gentle as lambs 
and yet perform most admirably and we are truly happy 
that notwithstanding the rain, she escaped getting wet. 
It would delight you to get a glimpse of us just now. 
Col. Kirkbride at the violin and she at the harpsichord 
and sings most blithely and most sweetly." 

Dr. John Morgan was appointed Di- 
rector-General of Hospitals and Physi- 
cian-in-Chief to the army in 1775, and it 
was upon this long and fatiguing journey 
that the husband and wife set forth so 
cheerfully. In one of her letters Mrs. 
Morgan begs her mother to write to her as 
often as possible, advising her to send her 
letters to Miss Morris, Mrs. Mifflin's sister, 
who had told her that " there would be an 
opportunity every three days." Of their 
reception at Cambridge she writes that 
there came 

" six or eight of the gentlemen of the faculty to wait 
upon Dr. Morgan and escort us to the Camp, some of 
them on horse back and some of them in carriages. I 
do assure you we had no small cavalcade. My good 
friend Mrs. Mifflin met us on the way in her chariot 
and conducted us to her house, where we are to stay till 
we are settled in one of our own. You may, my dear 



144 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Mamma, depend upon hearing from me by every op- 
portunity, and that very particularly but it must be a 
private one for I do not intend to put you to expense of 
postage. Since I have begun this letter I have had the 
honour of a visit from 4 Generals, Genl. Washington, 
Gen. PHitnam, Gen. Gates & Gen. Lee, while they were 
here a very interesting scene happened. There ar- 
rived an express of a Brig being taken belonging to the 
enemy by one of our vessels, it is a valuable prize as it 
was loaded with arms and ammunition, what delighted 
me excessively was seeing the pleasure which shone in 
every countenance particularly Gen. Gates's he was in 
an ecstacy, and as Genl. Washington was reading the 
invoice there was scarce an article that he did not com- 
ment upon and that with so much warmth as diverted 
everj'one present." 

Mrs. Morgan seems to have possessed 
the happy faculty of extracting pleasure 
and sweetness from all situations, conse- 
quently we find little or nothing in her 
letters of the privations of her camp life 
at Cambridge. 

Mrs. John Adams speaks of calling 
upon Mrs. Morgan, who, she says, '* keeps 
at Major Mifflin's," adding that she had 
the pleasure of drinking coffee with Dr. 
Morgan and his lady and the Major and 
Mrs. Mifflin, " always having been an ad- 



COLONIAL DAMES. 145 

mirer of the latter and his delicate lady." 
This visiting and paying of compliments, 
and gossiping over dishes of tea and coffee 
take us back into the heart of that old- 
time life. Even the grim face of war is 
sometimes made to present a holiday side, 
as when the officers had a tea-drinking, or 
when Mrs. Morgan witnessed a review of 
the battalions. This last she describes 
most graphically, even to giving the colors 
of the different uniforms. Among others, 
she speaks of a company composed entirely 
of young Quakers, who were arrayed in a 
light blue uniform turned up with white. 
The " Light Infantry" she finds " as com- 
pleat a company as can be, all gentlemen 
and most of them young fellows and very 
handsome, my neighbor Cadwalader Cap- 
tain, and my brother, George Morgan, first 
Lieutenant." Silas Deane's account of this 
battalion of Associators, known as the 
" Greens" and commanded by John Cad- 
walader, agrees with that of Mrs. Morgan. 
He says that they wore green uniforms 
faced with buff, their hat a hunter's cap, 
and " were without exception the genteel- 
G k 13 



146 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

est companies" he had ever seen. Of the 
Light Horse, later known as the Philadel- 
phia City Troop, Mrs. Morgan writes, — 

" Lastly come the • Light Horse,' Mr. Markoe their 
Captain — there is only five and twenty of them as yet 
but really they look exceedingly well, you would be 
surprised to see how well the horses are trained for the 
little time they have exercised, in short they all did 
exceedingly well and made a most martial appearance, 
what did not a little inspire them was the presence of 
a great number of the genteelest people of the place, 
among whom was collected the most pretty girls I have 
seen this long time." 

" I shall not put off writing because I 
happen not to be just as merry as a grig," 
says Mrs. Morgan to her sister. Yet 
through all her letters there runs a charm- 
ing vein of vivacity and gayety of heart 
which are in striking contrast to the sad 
tone of a letter from Francis Hopkinson 
to his brother-in-law. Dr. Samuel Coale, 
of Baltimore, in which he tells him of the 
death and burial of this much-loved sister. 
" She was buried," he says, " under the 
floor of St. Peter's Church near to the 
remains of Mr. Duche's children. The 



COLONIAL DAMES. 147 

morning was snowy and severely cold and 
the walking very dangerous and slippery, 
nevertheless a number of respectable citi- 
zens attended the funeral, and the pall was 
borne by the first ladies of the place." 

This custom of young girls and women 
acting as pall-bearers is often alluded to in 
journals of the day. When Mrs. Daniel 
Phcenix, of New York, wife of the City 
Treasurer, was buried, her pall-bearers were 
women, and Miss Sarah Eve, in her diary, 
written in Philadelphia in 1772 and '73, 
remarks in her usual independent and vi- 
vacious manner, " B. Rush, P. Dunn, K. 
Vaughan and myself carried Mr. Ash's 
child to be buried; foolish custom for 
Girls to prance it through the streets with- 
out hats or bonnets !"* Miss Eve says noth- 
ing about wearing a veil, although we read 

* A curious incident is, that while reading the above, 
in 1890, a brother of the child buried in 1772, Mr. 
John Morgan Ash, came into the rooms of the Histori- 
cal Society of Pennsylvania. To give authority to this 
statement, it may be well to explain that the father of 
this sister and brother of such different ages — Colonel 
Ash, of the Revolution — was born in 1750, was married 



148 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

elsewhere of the girl pall-bearers being 
dressed in white and wearing long white 
veils, as at the funeral of Fanny Durdin 
in 1812. 

Occasionally, as if to prove to us that 
our dear grandmothers enjoyed them- 
selves, girHsh laughter and frolic illuminate 
the pages of some old record, and we read 
of merry-makings or love-makings that 
beguiled the passing hour, as when young 
Mr. Porter's best man stole away his fair 
bride, Elizabeth Pitkin, or from a letter 
of Mrs. Edward Carrington, of Virginia, 
learn how her sister, Mary Ambler, capti- 
vated the learned Chief-Justice Marshall, 
whose wife she afterwards became. 

** Our expectations were raised to the highest pitch, 
and the little circle of York was on tiptoe on his ar- 
rival. Our girls particularly, were emulous who should 
be the first introduced ; it is remarkable that my sister, 
then on\y fourteen and diffident beyond all others, de- 
three times, and had twenty-four children. The baby 
which Miss Eve helped to carry to its grave in 1772 was 
bom when Colonel Ash was twenty or twenty-one, while 
Mr. John Morgan Ash, a child of the third marriage, 
was born early in the present century. 



COLONIAL DAMES. 149 

clared that we were giving ourselves useless trouble, 
for that she, for the first time, had made up her mind to 
go to the ball (though she had not even been to dancing- 
school), and was resolved to set her cap at him and 
eclipse us all. This in the end proved true, and at the 
first introduction he became devoted to her." 

In the diary of Lucinda of Virginia, 
who writes to her dear Marcia from " Bush- 
field" and " The Wilderness," we hear of 
country visits, tea-drinkings, and all the 
pleasant sociability that belonged to life in 
the Old Dominion. She wept over " Lady 
Julia Mandeville," this tender-hearted Lu- 
cinda, until her eyes were so red that 
she was ashamed to see her beaux, and 
then, although she had "but little time 
to smart herself," she " craped" her hair, 
put on a " Great-Coat," and considered 
herself " drest." She tells Marcia that 
one evening she and Milly Washington 
were " minded to eat " after they had 
decorously retired to their rooms for the 
night, and, having taxed their digestions 
with a dish of bacon and beef, followed 
by a bowl of sago cream, were about 
to enter upon the delights of a nocturnal 
" apple pye," when Mr. Corbin Washing- 



150 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

ton, in his wife's short gown and petticoat, 
and Mrs. Washington, in her husband's 
coat, burst in upon the scene and gave the 
youthful revellers a fine fright, after which 
they all settled down to enjoy the " apple 
pye" together. Elsewhere the same 
chronicler tells of Mr. Newton having 
received " his discard" from her cousin 
Nancy, and, with never a regret for the 
disappointed lover, gleefully relates that 
he could not tell the difference between 
" The Belle's Stratagem" and " The Coun- 
try Cousin" when read in the distracting 
presence of Miss Nancy. They were sad 
coquettes in their youth, these fair dames, 
although they look so demure in their 
portraits, and proved such exemplary wives 
and mothers in later years. Duels and 
despairing lovers seem scarcely to have 
ruffled the serenity of their lovely counte- 
nances, or to have made their hearts beat 
faster under their stiff bodices. Did they 
realize, with a wisdom beyond their years, 
that heart-breaks were not of necessity 
fatal ? Yet how crushed and bruised the 
poor hearts seemed ! 



COLONIAL DAMES. I5I 

Thomas Jefferson, at the age of nineteen, 
filled his letters to his friend, John Page, 
with rhapsodies upon the form and face of 
his " Belinda," humbly prays for another 
watch paper cut by her hands, and calls 
upon Providence to sustain him through 
the trial should she refuse him at the next 
Apollo ball, where he designs putting his 
fate to the touch. That he lost we know, 
as Rebecca Burwell, his " Belinda," soon 
after became the wife of Jacqueline Ambler, 
of Virginia; and although Jefferson felt, 
poor lad, that from him the joys of life 
had fled forever, it was not long before he 
recovered and became the devoted lover 
of Martha Skelton, who made Monticello 
an earthly paradise to her young husband 
during the brief period of their married 
hfe. Another beautiful Miss Burwell, also 
of Williamsburg, turned the head of an 
earlier Virginia statesman, Francis Nichol- 
son, who, like an Eastern sultan rather 
than a Colonial governor, proposed to cut 
the throats of his rival, of the clergyman 
who performed the ceremony, and of the 
justice who issued the license. 



152 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

" C'est I'amour, c'est I'amour 
Qui toume le monde ronde !" 

It seems as if the old couplet had been 
singing itself down all the years to assure 
us that these grandmothers and grand- 
fathers of ours, with all their wisdom and 
sacrifice and devotion to duty, were capa- 
ble of the same endearing follies that be- 
long to their children of to-day. 





OLD LANDMARKS. 

Treading the stone floors of old Christ 
Church, Philadelphia, under which he 
buried early governors of Pennsylvania 
and soldiers of Colonial times, we can pic- 
ture to ourselves President Washington, 
stately little Lady Washington, and lovely 
Nellie Custis, preceded by their footman, 
entering the church to take their places in 
the pew reserved for them between those 
of Bishop White and Dr. Franklin. Sit- 
ting in the Washington pew, in Christ 

153 



154 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Church at Alexandria, where the General 
was a vestryman, the spare form and intel- 
lectual face of the present rector under the 
sounding-board recall Seba Smith's lines, — 

" That sounding board, to me it seemed 

A cherub poised on high — 
A mystery I almost deemed 

Quite hid from vulgar eye ; 
And that old pastor, wrapt in prayer, 
Looked doubly awful 'neatli it there." 

In Trinity Church, New York, once 
called King's Chapel, the tombs and me- 
morials of early American bishops and 
heroes almost cause us to overlook the fact 
that but one stone remains of the original 
building ; while in the older church of St. 
Paul's, one remembers that William Vesey, 
reared upon the stern doctrine of Increase 
Mather, turned aside from that especial way 
of righteousness to preach here as early 
as 1704. Farther north, in a region long 
inhospitable to churches, Cotton Mather 
having announced that he "found no just 
ground in Scripture to apply such a trope 
as church to a public assembly," we find 
our way through the winding streets of old 



OLD LANDMARKS. 155 

Salem to the first meeting-house, erected 
in 1634, only two years after that of Smith- 
field, Virginia. As severe and unadorned 
in its architecture as the religious life of 
its founders is this little building, which 
proclaims Avith a certain force the doctrine 
for which they contended, — the right of 
man to seek his God and serve Him ac- 
cording to the dictates of his conscience. 
We turn from Boston's " Old South," long 
the stronghold of Puritanism, to Christ 
Church, called the "Old North," from 
which the signal lantern was hung aloft in 
the belfry arch on the night of April i8, 
1775 ; or, wandering through the aisles of 
King's Chapel, pause before the governor's 
pew to remember that General Washington 
worshipped here long before the Revolu- 
tion,* or notice the square pew, once 
adorned with the royal arms of England, 

♦Colonel Washington went to Boston in 1756, ac- 
companied by Captain George Mercer, to confer with 
General Shirley with reference to the precedence in 
military rank between crown and provincial commis- 
sions. — " Early Sketches of George Washington," by 
William S. Baker. 



156 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

which was in Colonial days reserved for 
any member of the Hanover family who 
might be pleased to cross the water to visit 
his American subjects. Worshipping to- 
day in such ancient churches as are left to 
this generation, or reading familiar names 
from the tablets upon their walls, or from 
the headstones in their graveyards, that 
old life seems so near our own, so knit to 
it by strands of religious faith and domes- 
tic association, that we can almost see the 
stately throng of men and women as they 
once passed through the doors and along 
the aisles to their pews. The ladies are 
stiff in satin, brocade and buckram, and 
yet not too rigid to send forth bewilder- 
ing glances from beneath their overshad- 
owing plumed hats upon the cavaliers who 
attend them, and who are as brave as they 
in their picturesque costumes, rich with 
lace and embroidery. Even in New Eng- 
land, with all the preaching and legislating 
against silk, lace, embroideries, cut-works, 
and slashed garments, human nature pre- 
vailed. The Abbe Robin remarked, in 
view of the gaudy dress of the women in 



OLD LANDMARKS. 157 

church, that it was the only theatre that 
they had for the display of their finery, 
while we with equal indulgence may par- 
don those fair ones of the olden time who 
allowed their eyes to wander in the pauses 
of devotion toward the Governor's pew 
where Madam, recently returned from a 
visit to her English relatives, was seated, 
resplendent in the latest London modes. 

Mr. Bynner has given us a picture of the 
first appearance of Agnes Surriage and Sir 
Henry Frankland at church together, the 
occasion being the funeral service of 
Madam Shirley, the kindly and generous 
friend of the fisherman's daughter from 
Marblehead. Induced to appear in public 
with her lover through her strong affec- 
tion for her benefactress, Agnes, in deep 
mourning, takes her place in a pew near 
that of the governor and his children, where 
she is soon made to feel the bitter scorn 
of the high-born dames who had once de- 
lighted to heap compliments upon her 
beauty, while Sir Henry finds that he is 
powerless to defend the shrinking girl from 
the insolent glances of his comrades. These 
14 



158 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

picturesque figures in the quaint setting of 
King's Chapel form a striking and impres- 
sive scene worthy of the pen which has 
portrayed it for this generation. Near 
Christ Church is still shown the house at 
the corner of Tileston Street, where Agnes 
dwelt under the roof of the austere widow, 
and where she tended the little garden 
which, from its luxuriant growth of rare 
flowers and plants, was the wonder of the 
neighborhood. 

Strolling through another and far more 
spacious garden upon the banks of the Po- 
tomac, whose box-bordered beds and trim 
parterres tell of the French gardener who 
laid out the grounds of Mount Vernon, or 
standing upon the high bluff, where Wash- 
ington must often have stood to enjoy the 
lovely sweep of the shining river, we can 
form some idea of the beauty and-seclusion 
that surrounded the home life of the stately 
but simple-hearted Virginia gentleman and 
gentlewoman. " There," says the gar- 
dener, " are some fine tulip- and ash-trees 
planted by the General, here are some 
hydrangeas that the Marquis de Lafayette 



OLD LANDMARKS. I 59 

brought with him in 1824, and here is the 
rose-bush beside which Lawrence Lewis 
proposed to Nellie Custis," adding, "The 
negroes call it the magic rose, as it is sup- 
posed to insure the success of the most 
unpromising love-affair." 

Such associations ?jring the old life be- 
fore us with a sudden crowding upon the 
canvas of historic scenes and figures. The 
long, low house, elegant with all its sim- 
plicity, covered less ground in Colonial 
times than it now does. In early days it 
was the home of Captain Lawrence Wash- 
ington, who named his Virginia plantation 
after Admiral Vernon, under whom he had 
served in the English expedition against 
Cartagena, and for whom he ever enter- 
tained a warm friendship. A painting of 
Admiral Vernon before Cartagena, given 
to Lawrence Washington by the admiral 
in recognition of this friendship, is still 
hanging over one of the mantels of Mount 
Vernon, where is also a portrait of the 
handsome, dark-eyed owner of the estate. 
Its mistress, in those days, was Anne, 
daughter of the Hon. William Fairfax, who 



l6o COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

occupied the position of collector of cus- 
toms in Salem and Marblehead before he 
came to Belvoir, Virginia, to become presi- 
dent of the Council of that State. Mrs. 
Washington, the mother of George and 
the step-mother of Lawrence, is now at 
Mount Vernon more frequently, perchance, 
than under its later mistress, there having 
existed a friendship of long standing, if 
not a family connection, between the 
Washingtons and the Fairfaxes. George 
is coming and going, like a child of the 
house, between his long surveying expedi- 
tions for Lord Fairfax in the western wilds, 
where, if there were often no knives upon 
the table " to eat with," there seems always 
to have been a pen with which to record 
the experiences of the day. A great fa- 
vorite with the owner of Mount Vernon, 
and destined to be his heir, is the tall strip- 
ling, whose face and form give promise of 
the distinguished presence that was later 
to command respect at home and abroad. 
Something strangely interesting there is 
in all that relates to the youth of Wash- 
ington, whether in his mother's home, or 



OLD LANDMARKS. l6l 

at Mount Vernon, or as the welcome guest 
of old Lord Fairfax at Greenway Court in 
the Shenandoah Valley. 

Although heavy responsibilities were 
placed upon these young shoulders, it is 
pleasant to know that Washington often 
joined in fox-hunts, a favorite pastime of 
the Virginia gentry, and also that he was 
as capable of " sighing like a furnace" as 
any other love-struck swain. At seven- 
teen he wrote to his " dear Friend Robin," 
from Belvoir, 

" I might, was my heart disengag'd, pass my time 
very pleasantly as there's a very agreeable Young Lady 
Lives in the same house (Col" George Fairfax's Wife's 
Sister) but as thats only adding Fuel to fire it makes 
me more uneasy for by often and unavoidably being in 
Company with her revives my former Passion for your 
Low Land Beauty whereas was I to live more retired 
from Young Women I might in some measure eliviate 
my sorrows by burying that chast and troublesome Pas- 
sion in the grave of oblivion or eternall forgetfulness, 
... as I am well convinced was I ever to attempt 
any thing I should only get a denial which would be 
only adding grief to uneasiness." 

The modesty of this effusion certainly 
adds to its attractiveness ; and as for the 

/ 14* 



l62 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

spelling — vowels and consonants seem, in 
those days, to have been used in hap-hazard 
fashion by older writers than those of sev- 
enteen years. That Washington could not 
have mourned very long over this " chast 
and troublesome Passion," whose object is 
supposed to have been Miss Lucy Grymes, 
afterwards the mother of General Henry 
Lee, is evident from the fact that he was 
beginning to find " the Young Lady in the 
house," Miss Mary Gary, very agreeable ; 
while that he did not practise his theory 
of living " retired from Young Women" is 
proved by subsequent experiences. 

A New York house that naturally links 
itself in thought with Mount Vernon is 
the old Philipse Manor, where Mary Phil- 
ipse spent her early days. Here the 
Philipses presided for generations over 
vast estates in the counties of Westches- 
ter, Dutchess, and Putnam, being known 
among their tenantry as the Junkers (pro- 
nounced Yonkers), or gentlemen par ex- 
cellence, to which title the town of Yonkers, 
that gradually grew up around the old 
manor-house, owes its name. 



OLD LANDMARKS. 163 

This was the home of her childhood, 
but it was at the house of her sister, Mrs. 
Beverly Robinson, that Mary Philipse met 
Colonel Washington. The history of this 
rather shadowy love-affair has never been 
fully told, although frequently referred to. 
Mr. Irving's explanation is that the young 
soldier, ever alert in the path of duty, 
quitted too soon the lists of love for those 
of war, thus leaving the field to his rival, 
Colonel Morris. In support of this theory, 
Mr. Irving remarks upon the great des- 
patch with which Washington conducted 
his wooing of the widow Custis, soon after, 
as if " he feared, should he leave the mat- 
ter in suspense, some more enterprising 
rival might supplant him during his ab- 
sence, as in the case of Miss Philipse, at 
New York." With due respect to Mr. 
Irving, it does not seem consistent with 
the character of Washington to turn aside 
so readily from the pursuit of anything 
that he greatly desired ; and from the 
fact that Miss Philipse so soon after mar- 
ried Colonel Morris, it is more natural to 
conclude that her affections were engaged 



164 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

before she met the young Virginian, There 
being no positive data on the subject, and 
the spirit of a love-affair being about as 
difficult to transmit from one generation 
to another as the tone of a voice or the 
glance of an eye, we feel free to put upon 
the affair the construction that detracts 
least from the dignity of the American 
hero. After her marriage, Mary Philipse 
lived in the home which Colonel Morris 
built upon a high bank of the Harlem 
River, about a mile from the site of old 
Fort Washington, one of the most pic- 
turesque spots upon the island. This 
house, still standing and in good preser- 
vation, a fine example of a Colonial resi- 
dence, was long known as the Roger Mor- 
ris and later as the Jumel House. The 
best view of the mansion is to be had from 
the river-drive near One Hundred and 
Sixty- First Street, while from the portico 
there is a fine prospect of the Harlem River 
and of the great city which has grown up 
around it since its erection in 1 75 8. Strange 
to relate, Washington made his head-quar- 
ters here while engaged in military opera- 



OLD LANDMARKS. 165 

tions around New York in the autumn of 
1776, and barely escaped capture in the 
home of his former friends, as the British 
troops took possession of the premises a 
half-hour after the American General had 
vacated them. Here also General Knyp- 
hausen, unused to such surroundings, if we 
are to believe the strange tales told of his 
spreading the butter on his bread with his 
fingers, and of other eccentricities at table, 
had his head-quarters during the British 
occupation of New York. 

At the close of the war the property of 
Colonel Morris was confiscated and the 
house was for a time an inn, where par- 
ties from New York were entertained. 
Once again General (then President) Wash- 
ington visited the old mansion, as he re- 
cords in his diary of July lo, 1790: 

" Having formed a Party consisting of the Vice- 
President [John Adams], his lady and Son and Miss 
Smith, the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War 
[Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and General 
Knox] and the ladies of the two latter, with all the 
gentlemen of my family, Mrs. Lear and the two chil- 
dren, we visited the old position of Fort Washington, 
and afterwards dined on a dinner provided by Mr. 



l66 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Mariner, at the house lately of Colonel Morris, but con- 
fiscated and in the possession of a common Farmer." 



The house later passed into the hands 
of Stephen Jumel, who with his wife, gay 
Madame Jumel, lived here in great state 
and luxury, driving their carriage drawn 
by eight horses, and giving entertainments 
as celebrated for their sumptuousness and 
luxury as were those of Madam Rush 
of Philadelphia at a later date. Here 
Stephen Jumel died, and here occurred that 
strangest of weddings, when Aaron Burr, 
refused again and again by Madame Ju- 
mel, appeared at her door one day, ac- 
companied by the Rev. Dr. Bogart, and 
insisted upon marrying her. Why the lady 
consented it is difficult to discover, unless 
Aaron Burr at seventy-eight still retained 
some of the attractions that had rendered 
him irresistible at an earlier age. Upon 
one occasion, at her own home. Colonel 
Burr had, in handing Madame Jumel in to 
dinner, said, " I give you my hand, ma- 
dame ; my heart has long been yours." 

The guests probably looked upon the 



OLD LANDMARKS. 167 

expressions of the elderly man of fashion 
as withered flowers of speech natural to 
one who had passed his youth in an age 
of extravagant compliment, and great sur- 
prise w^as expressed by the friends of Ma- 
dame Jumel when it became know^n that 
she had yielded to the importunities of her 
aged suitor, especially when they learned 
of the out-of-hand manner in which the 
affair had been conducted. Somewhat 
similar to this is a story told of Colonel 
Nathaniel Burwell, of Carter Hall, Vir- 
ginia, who was so afflicted by the death 
of his wife, Susanna Grymes, that he went 
to Rosewell and requested Governor John 
Page to send for his young and beautiful, 
•widowed half-sister, Mrs. George W. Bay- 
lor, for him to marry. The widow came 
obedient to the summons, but objected, 
upon which Colonel Burwell exclaimed, 
" Lucy, you don't know what is good for 
you ; your brother John and I arranged it 
all before you came," which dogmatic as- 
sertion seeming to satisfy Mrs. Baylor, she 
acceded to the family arrangement with 
the meekness of a woman of the Old Tes- 



l68 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

tament. After the ceremony, the groom, 
turning to the fair bride, said, " Now, Lucy, 
you can weep for your dear George and I 
will weep for my beloved Suky !" 

We are not told that Colonel Burr and 
Madame Jumel spent their days in weeping 
over their respective consorts; but there 
is good authority for believing that tears 
were shed by one at least of this ill-assorted 
couple. 

Another picture remains of a scene in 
the old mansion, when Madame Jumel was 
entertaining Joseph Bonaparte. Madame 
refused to pass through the door to take 
her place at table in advance of her guest, 
because he was a prince. The gentleman 
bowed and politely declined to take pre- 
cedence of a lady, while the guests stood 
aside, waiting to see how the question 
of etiquette would be decided. How the 
matter was settled upon this occasion is 
not related, but two doors cut through 
later, and still standing side by side, show 
how the hostess avoided similar complica- 
tions in the future. 

The bouweries of Governor Stuyvesant, 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1 69 

Stephen Van Cortlandt, and Jacobus Kip 
were in what is now the heart of the great 
city, the possessions of the influential fam- 
ilies of De Lancey and Roosevelt were 
in the centre of the island, while farther 
up the Hudson were the vast manors of 
the Beekmans, Livingstons, Van Rens- 
selaers, Schuylers, and Johnsons, where 
these patroons lived among and ruled 
over their tenantry like the feudal lords 
of old England. When a member of the 
Van Rensselaer family died, the tenants, 
sometimes amounting to several thou- 
sand, says Bishop Kip, came down to 
Albany to pay their respects to his mem- 
ory, and to drink to the peace of his soul 
in good ale from his generous cellars. 
The cannon which stood at the entrance 
of the Van Rensselaer manor-house, and 
which was always fired upon the birth or 
death of one of the family, is still preserved 
to testify to the honors paid these long 
dead and gone patroons. The burial of 
Philip Livingston, in 1749, upon which oc- 
casion services were performed at his house 
in New York as well as at the manor- 

H IS 



I/O COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

house, is thus described in a journal of the 
day: 

" In the city, the lower rooms of most of the houses 
in Broadstreet, where he resided, were thrown open to 
receive visitors. A pipe of wine was spiced for the oc- 
casion, and to each of the eight bearers, with a pair of 
gloves, mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief, a mon- 
key-spoon was given. [This was so called from the fig- 
ure of an ape or monkey which was carved in solido at 
the extremity of the handle. It differed from a common 
spoon in having a circular and very shallow bowl.] 
At the manor these ceremonies were all repeated, an- 
other pipe of wine was spiced, and besides the same 
presents to the bearers, a pair of black gloves and a 
handkerchief were given to each of the tenants. The 
whole expense was said to amount to ;^5oo."* 

Many interesting associations cluster 
round the Livingston manor, built by 
Chancellor Livingston. The old home- 
stead of Judge Robert R. Livingston and 
his wife, Margaret Beekman, was destroyed 
by the British in 1777. From this happy 
home, to whose mistress Judge Livingston 

■* At funerals in old New York it was customary to 
serve hot wine in winter and sangaree in summer. 
Burnt wine was sometimes served in silver tankards. — 
" History of New York," by William L. Stone. 



OLD LANDMARKS. I /I 

writes after thirteen years of married life, 
" My imagination paints you with all your 
loveliness, with all the charms my soul has 
so many years doated on," came such sons 
as Robert R. Livingston, first Chancellor 
of the State of New York, Colonel Henry 
B. Livingston, and youngest, but not least 
important, Edward, the distinguished law- 
yer and statesman, who married the beau- 
tiful widow Moreau. Janet Livingston 
married General Montgomery, who fell at 
Quebec, while her youger sister, Alida, be- 
came the wife of General John Armstrong. 
Robert R. Livingston represented the 
United States at the Court of France, and, 
although very deaf, was as fluent and enter- 
taining in French as in English. He was 
succeeded by his brother-in-law, General 
Armstrong, who could speak no French, 
upon which Napoleon exclaimed, " What 
strange people are these Americans ! First 
they send me a deaf man, and then one 
who is dumb." 

In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Dela- 
ware, where the patroon system did not 
prevail, there were extensive manors laid 



172 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

out for the Biddies, Norrises, Penns, and 
others, and handsome mansions, as that at 
Belmont where William Peters and his 
wife, Mary Brientnal, lived before the 
Revolution, and where their son, the 
learned and witty Judge Peters, resided 
later ; The Hills, once a McPherson prop- 
erty, to which General Arnold took his 
lovely bride, Margaret Shippen, in the 
summer of 1779; and Lansdowne, the 
country-seat of John Penn, where, in days 
after the Revolution, the beautiful Mrs. 
Bingham held a court worthy of a princess. 
Mr. Breck tells an amusing story of 
Mrs. Bingham's attempt to introduce the 
foreign fashion of having her guests an- 
nounced. " The doctor and Miss Peggy" 
were the names given by the unsuspect- 
ing coachman to the servant in livery, 
who, with the literalness that seems to 
belong to the liveried official, repeated 
" The doctor and Miss Pegg>'" to the next 
lackey, and thus the names were sounded 
through the great halls to the drawing- 
room, where " the doctor and Miss Peggy," 
Dr. Kuhn and his step-daughter. Miss 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1/3 

Markoe, arrived in a state of rather un- 
dignified merriment. 

South of Lansdowne is Woodlands, still 
standing, a good example of a handsome 
Colonial mansion. Here lived Andrew 
Hamilton, known all through the Colonies 
as a great lawyer, having won the cele- 
brated Zenger case in New York, which, 
like that of John Wilkes in England, re- 
solved itself into a sturdy Anglo-Saxon 
protest against restricting the liberty of the 
press, — such liberty as we now possess, and 
in whose exercise we sometimes feel as did 
the Israelites of old, that the desire of our 
hearts has been granted, but that leanness 
has entered into our souls. In a London 
letter to the Pcnnsylvayiia Gazette, Mr. 
Hamilton is spoken of as a " Goliath in 
Learning and Politics," while great English 
barristers admitted that the subject of libels 
had never been so well treated at West- 
minster Hall as in New York by Andrew 
Hamilton, which shows that the proverbial 
Philadelphia lawyer was abroad at an early 
day. It was the second Andrew Hamil- 
ton who was living at Woodlands when 
IS* 



174 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Mr. Black came to Philadelphia, and who, 
with Secretary Peters and Mr. Robert 
Strettell, welcomed him into the Province 
with old-time hospitality and " a Bowl of 
fine Lemon Punch big enough to have 
Swimm'd half a dozen of young geese." 
Near Woodlands, overlooking the river, 
is the house of John Bartram, surrounded 
by his famous botanical garden, the first 
in the country. Some of the trees are 
still standing under which sat such great 
scientists as Dr. Casper Wistar, Dr. Rush, 
and David Rittenhouse, or such statesmen 
as Jefferson and Adams. 

Wakefield, a Fisher homestead, and 
James Logan's residence, Stenton, to 
which the friendly Indians came in such 
numbers that they were obliged to encamp 
upon the lawn, are both in the German- 
town neighborhood ; while to walk along 
the narrow Main Street is like taking a 
journey into the past century, so many 
sober, drab-colored facades and charming 
white-columned doors present themselves, 
offering dignified rebuke to the noisy, 
modern trolley that whirls between them. 



OLD LANDMARKS. 175 

Notable among the older and more spacious 
dwellings is Cliveden, the Chew house, 
which appears in Revolutionary prints 
emitting flame and smoke, like the dragons 
of fairy lore, with riflemen firing from every 
window and armed Continentals charging 
across its lawn. As the home of Coun- 
cillor Benjamin Chew and his bevy of gay 
daughters, this house has a history of its 
own, before the war and after ; and during 
the British occupation Major Andre was 
often there. A pleasant picture of these 
days at Cliveden has lately come to us 
from a member of the family, with some 
verses written by Andre upon seeing Miss 
Peggy's fair face framed by a spray of 
apple-blossoms. Love and hope were in 
their spring-time with this pair, and who 
can tell what vows were exchanged be- 
neath the blossoming branches of the 
Cliveden trees, especially as later dis- 
closures seem to place almost beyond 
question the report that the young officer 
was engaged to Miss Chew, whose knight 
he was in the famous Meschianza ? That 
Peggy Chew did not marry until seven 



176 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

years after Andre's death is a rather sig- 
nificant fact in \-iew of her attractions and 
the early age at which women married in 
those days. Her marriage to General 
Howard, the hero of Cowpens, was sol- 
emnized in the Chew house on Third 
Street, upon which occasion Washington 
was present and doubtless trod a measure, 
as the Commander-in-Chief had a ^^•arm ad- 
miration for this family of bright sisters, with 
whose father he was upon friendly terms.* 

Mrs. Sophie Ho^\•ard Ward saj-s that 
after her grandmother's marriage she 
still loved to dwell upon Major Andre's 
charms, while her patriotic husband ^^•as 
wont to cut short her reminiscences by 

exclaiming. " He was a spy. nothing 

but a spy ! " 

Beautiful with the serene beaur^- ot old 



* Ahhoagb obliged to l^ve Plxiladelphia in August. 
1777. being undo- anest as an officer of the Crown, 
Mr. Chew was allowed to c<»ne back to his home in 
May. 177S, no overt act being tiiaiged against him. 
Later, under the new goremment. he was Judge and 
President of the High Court of Exdse and Appeals of 
Pennsvlvania from 1791 until iSoS. 



OLD LANDMARKS. I// 

age, rich with many associations clustered 
about it, stands the Wister homestead, 
Grumblethorpe. Built by John Wister, 
who came to Pennsylvania in 1727, this 
was the first summer residence erected by 
a Philadelphian in Germantown. Vernon, 
another Wister house, is much more pictu- 
resquely situated upon what was once the 
property of Melchior Meng. Although 
Grumblethorpe stands directly upon the 
Main Street, the garden and grounds reach 
back some distance, embracing several 
acres, and boasting a charming garden full 
of old-fashioned flowers, and a pear-tree 
planted by John Wister, the first settler. 
One of the habitues of this house was 
Count Zinzendorf, a man of high rank 
and large possessions, who came to 
America in the interests of the Moravian 
Church. The Saxon nobleman was an 
intimate friend of ]\Ir. Wister's, who, in his 
later years, strongly inclined towards the 
religion of the Hussites. 

In this mansion, long known as the 
"Wister's Big House," General Agnew 
made his head-quarters, and hither, after 



178 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

the battle of Germantown, he was carried 
mortally wounded. The spot is still 
shown where he died ; the blood-stains are 
upon the floor, like those at Holyrood 
which tell where Rizzio fell. Under the 
spell of the associations of that older 
time, we read, over the gallant officer's 
signature, tender, manly words written to 
his wife, telling her that the war will not 
last many months, when it will be his 
pleasure to dedicate to her the rest of his 
life ; and, quite forgetting that he was our 
country's enemy, we think of him only as 
a brave gentleman who died in a strange 
land in the honest discharge of his duty. 
War seems terrible — a ghastly spectre 
divested of all pomp and circumstance — 
when we think of Agnew dying of his 
wounds in the old Germantown house, far 
from his Mary and the children whom 
he loved, or hear the words of a British 
officer to his men who were burying the 
dead from the field of Germantown, 
" Don't bury them with their faces up, 
and thus cast dirt in their faces. They 
are all mothers' sons." 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1/9 

Wedding bells were heard in the old 
home as well as funeral dirges. Here, 
under the moulded circle in the parlor 
ceiling, Major Lennox, an American officer 
who had his head-quarters in the Wister 
house, was married to Miss Lukens, who, 
like a heroine of romance, spent her 
honeymoon in this beleaguered castle. 
Passing from the parlor into the hall, we 
are suddenly confronted with a life-size 
figure of a British grenadier in full uni- 
form, who stands here like a sentinel 
guarding the memorials of the past. This 
wooden figure, which is admirable in out- 
line and coloring, has been attributed to 
Major Andre; but the fact that it plays a 
prominent part in Sally Wistcr's diary of 
life in the Foulkc house, at Pcnllyn, where 
the Wister family took refuge before the 
battle of Germantown, precludes this idea. 
Andre's scenery and drops for the little 
theatre in Southwark were painted several 
months later, and Miss Wister herself says, 
" We had brought some weeks ago a 
British grenadier from Uncle Miles's on 
purpose to divert us." The young girl's 



l80 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

description of the pranks played with this 
soldier of wood and paint, written for the 
entertainment of her friend Miss Deborah 
Norris, has the freshness and vivacity of 
a story of to-day. It had been planned 
by the " amiable Major Stodard" and her 
mischievous self to give poor Mr, Tilly a 
fright. After explaining that the British 
grenadier had been placed near a door 
opening into the road, another figure 
near by "to add to the deceit," Miss 
Wister relates the success of her rather 
severe practical joke : 

" Sixth Day, Night. 

" In the beginning of the evening I went to Liddy 
and beg'd her to secure the swords and pistols which 
were in their parlour. The Marylander, hearing our 
voices, joined us. I told him of our proposal. Whether 
he thought it a good one or not I can't say, but he ap- 
prov'd of it, and Liddy went in and brought her apron 
full of swords and pistols. When this was done, Stod- 
ard join'd the officers. We girls went and stood at the 
first landing of the stairs. The gentlemen were very 
merry, and chatting on public affairs, when Seaton's 
negro (observe that Seaton, being indisposed, was ap- 
priz'd of the scheme) open'd the door, candle in hand, 
and said, * There's somebody at the door that wishes to 
see you.' ' Who ? All of us ?' said Tilly. ' Yes, Sir,' 



I 

OLD LANDMARKS. l8l 

said the boy. They all rose (the Major, as he said 
afterwards, almost dying with laughter), and walked 
into the entry, Tilly first, in full expectation of news. 
The first object that struck his view was a British sol- 
dier. In a moment his ears were saluted, * Is there any 
rebel officers here ?' in a thundering voice. Not waiting 
for a second word, he darted like lightning out of the 
front door, through the yard, bolted o'er the fence. 
Swamps, fences, thorn-hedges and plough' d fields no 
way impeded his retreat. He was soon out of hearing. 
The woods echoed with, ' Which way did he go ? 
Stop him ! Surround the house !' The amiable Lips- 
comb had his hand on the latch of the door, intending 
to make his escape ; Stodard, considering his indisposi- 
tion, acquainted him with the deceit. We females ran 
down stairs to join in the general laugh. I walked into 
Jesse's parlour. There sat poor Stodard (whose sore 
lips must have receiv'd no advantage from this), almost 
convuls'd with laughing, rolling in an arm-chair. He 
said nothing; I believe he could not have spoke. 
' Major Stodard,' said I, ' go to call Tilly back. He 
will lose himself, — indeed he will ;' every word inter- 
rupted with a ' Ha ! ha !' At last he rose, and went 
to the door; and what a loud voice could avail in 
bringing him back, he tried. Figure to thyself this 
Tilly, of a snowy evening, no hat, shoes down at the 
heel, hair unty'd, flying across meadows, creeks, and 
mud-holes. Flying from what ? Why, a bit of painted 
wood. But he was ignorant of what it was. The idea 
of being made a prisoner wholly engrossed his mind, 
and his last resource was to run. 

" After a while, we being in more composure, and 

i6 



1 82 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

our bursts of laughter less frequent, yet by no means 
subsided, — in full assembly of girls and officers, — Tilly 
enter'd. The greatest part of my risibility turn'd to 
pity. Inexpressible confusion had taken entire posses- 
sion of his countenance, his fine hair hanging dishevell'd 
down his shoulders, all splashed with mud ; yet his 
bright confusion and race had not divested him of his 
beauty. He smil'd as he trip'd up the steps; but 'twas 
vexation plac'd it on his features. Joy at that moment 
was banished from his heart. He briskly walked five 
or six steps, then stop'd, and took a general survey of 
us all. ' Where have you been, Mr. Tilly ?' ask'd one 
officer. (We girls were silent.) ' I really imagin'd,' 
said Major Stodard, ' that you were gone for your pis- 
tols, I follow'd you to prevent danger,' — an excessive 
laugh at each question, which it was impossible to re- 
strain. ' Pray, where were your pistols, Tilly ?' He 
broke his silence by the following expression : ' You 
may all go to the D — 1.' I never heard him utter an 
indecent expression before." 

That this adventure was rather discom- 
fiting to Mr. Tilly may be gathered from 
the smart journalizer's statement that on 
First day night he had not " said a sylla- 
ble to one of us young ladies since Sixth 
day eve." When the silence was finally 
broken, Mr. Tilly showed that all bitterness 
had departed from his soul, as he yielded 
to the good-natured merriment of the hour 



OLD LANDMARKS. I 83 

and gave the company a humorous ac- 
count of his own exploits. 

Between Germantown and Philadelphia 
was Fair Hill, the home of Isaac Norris, 
and near Frankford, upon a fair green spot 
in the midst of a net-work of railroads, 
stands Chalkley Hall. Of this country- 
seat and its former owner, the devout visit- 
ing Friend, Thomas Chalkley, the poet 
Whittier wrote after a stroll through the 
grounds, — 

" Beneath the arms 
Of this embracing wood, a good man made 
His home, like Abraham resting in the shade 
Of Mamre's lonely palms." 

V 

The old mansion, which has been in the 
possession of the Wetherill family since 
1 81 7, was long the home of Abel James, 
who married a daughter of Thomas Chalk- 
ley. Tradition tells of a great dinner given 
here in Colonial days, when eighty covers 
were laid, and the soup was served to each 
guest in a silver porringer. The hall of 
the old house is spacious enough to admit 
of an even larger company ; but the story 



184 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

of the eighty porringers is a trifle problem- 
atical, although that some such articles of 
plate existed members of the family are 
able to prove by the most conclusive of all 
demonstrations. Another famous dinner, 
spread by Mrs. Abel James, in 1777, for 
some ill-fed Continental soldiers encamped 
in the neighborhood, was unceremoniously 
interrupted by the sentry's cry, " The Red- 
coats are upon us !" A sudden shifting 
of figures upon the scene ensued, the in- 
vited guests retreating by one door, while 
the unbidden convives entered by the 
other, and, taking their places at the board, 
fell with a will upon Mrs. James's good 
cheer, for which they afterwards had the 
grace to thank her most politely. An- 
other story told of this kindly mistress of 
Chalkley Hall is, that during the British 
occupation she frequently carried a little 
pig under the seat of her chaise to some 
of her friends in Philadelphia who were 
greatly in need of food. The dignified 
Quaker lady passed the British sentinel 
unmolested, no person suspecting her of 
smuggling live-stock through the lines. 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1 85 

Hearing an old Philadelphian recount 
his boyish exploits upon the cherry-trees 
of his neighbor Charles Wharton and de- 
scribe in detail his and other fine old homes 
on Second Street, we can form some idea 
of the spaciousness of these dwellings, with 
their terraced gardens in the rear reaching 
back to Third Street, and capacious cellars 
in which were stored hogsheads of rum 
from Jamaica and casks of wine from Lis- 
bon and the Canaries. John Cadwalader 
built a house on Second Street prior to 
1774, as John Adams and Silas Deane 
both wrote of being dined and wined here 
at that date. The latter says, " I dined 
yesterday with Mr. Cadwalader, whose fur- 
niture and house exceed anything I have 
seen in this city or elsewhere." It was in 
his large garden, reaching to Third Street, 
that John Cadwalader drilled and enter- 
tained in great style the military company 
raised by him, the first formed in Penn- 
sylvania. This company, "the Greens," 
called in derision the " Silk Stocking Com- 
pany," most of its members being gentle- 
men, afterwards formed a part of General 
16* 



1 86 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

Cadwalader's brigade, which distinguished 
itself upon many battle-fields. 

Over this home on Second Street pre- 
sided Elizabeth Lloyd, the first wife of 
General Cadwalader, and, later, beautiful 
Williamina Bond, and here grew into the 
loveliness that afterwards distinguished 
them such fair daughters of the house 
as Maria Cadwalader, who married Gen- 
eral Samuel Ringgold, of Fountain Rock, 
Maryland, and Frances, who became the 
wife of David Montagu Erskine, some- 
time secretary to the British legation in 
Philadelphia.* A miniature of Frances 

* A daughter of Lord and Lady Erskine married 
James Henry Callender, and was celebrated for her 
beauty in England and on the Continent, Another 
daughter, the Hon. Mary Erskine, married, in 1832, 
Hermann, Count von Baumgarten, of Bavaria. A story 
has prevailed, and even found its way into print, that 
this English lady was the author of " The Initials," 
" Quits," etc. To correct this on-dit it is only necessary 
to state that Mary Erskine, Countess von Baumgarten, 
died March 15, 1874, while the author of " The Initials" 
died November 12, 1893. The latter was Jemima, 
daughter of James Montgomery, of Sea View, County 
Donegal, of the branch of the noble house of the Mont- 
gomerys of Eglinton, that has long been settled in the 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1 8/ 

Cadwalader, painted after she became 
Lady Erskine, was sent from England 
to her cousin, Mrs. Samuel Blodget. The 
portraits of the two kinswomen show 
that they inherited no small share of the 
beauty of their ancestress, Williamina 
Moore, of Moore Hall. 

Not far from the Cadwaladers', at the 
corner of Second and Union Streets, Archi- 
bald McCall, the India merchant, built a 
home about 1762, which is still standing. 
In its great garden were kept various ani- 
mals, brought from foreign parts by his 
supercargoes, making it, says Mr. Town- 
send Ward, the first zoological garden in 
Philadelphia. During the occupation of 
the city by the British, Sir William Howe 
made his head-quarters in the Cadwal- 
ader house, when much of the gallant 
soldier's good wine was doubtless en- 
joyed by the red-coated officers. Sir 
William afterwards removed his head- 
north of Ireland. In 1838, Miss Montgomery married 
the Baron Tautphoeus, of Marquardstein Castle, Ba- 
varia, Privy Councillor and Chamberlain to the King. 
— Burke's " Peerage and Baronetage," 1 89 1. 



165 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

quarters to a large house on High Street, 
above Sixth, which was once the home 
of Richard Penn and his wife Polly Mas- 
ters, to whom the property was given by 
her mother as a wedding gift. Richard 
was the most popular of the younger 
Penns, and here he and his wife lived in 
hospitable old-fashioned style. While he 
had his head-quarters on High Street, Gen- 
eral Howe drove Mrs. Israel Pemberton's 
handsome coach and pair. The dignified 
owner of the equipage having stipulated 
that it should be driven to her house first, 
it always stood before her door an hour 
before being placed at the disposal of the 
British officer. The house at the corner 
of Sixth and High Streets and the one 
above it belonged to Robert Morris. The 
latter being considered the most suitable 
in the city for the residence of the Chief 
Executive, General Washington came here 
in 1790. Mr. Morris occupied the corner 
house, where, says Mr. Breck, " he did the 
honors of the city by a profuse, incessant, 
and elegant hospitality. . . . There was a 
luxury in the kitchen, table, parlor, and 



OLD LANDMARKS. 1 89 

street equipage of Mr. and Mrs. Morris that 
were to be found nowhere else in America." 
To both these houses came all persons 
of note who visited Philadelphia from 1790 
to 1 797. It was in the drawing-room of Mrs. 
Robert Morris that the Prince de Broglie 
performed his feat of tea-drinking, accepting 
one cup of tea after another because they 
were offered to him by a lady, as he after- 
wards explained, adding, " I should be 
even now drinking it, if the Ambassador 
had not charitably notified me at the 
twelfth cup, that I must put my spoon 
across it when I wished to finish with this 
sort of warm water." Among frequent 
guests at the Presidential mansion were 
Mr. and Mrs. William Lewis ; he a dis- 
tinguished lawyer and judge under the 
first administration, while she, an Irish 
beauty, who, from the social life abroad, to 
which she had the entree as the daughter 
of Sir John Esmonde, of Huntingdon 
Castle, Ireland, and as the wife of Richard 
Durdin, brought a charm and grace of 
manner equal to her beauty into the Re- 
publican Court of Mrs. Washington. 



190 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

On Fourth Street, near Spruce, still 
stands the home of good Dr. Physick, the 
magic of whose name, in more senses than 
one, was enough to cure an ailing mortal, 
while on Chestnut Street, above Sixth, was 
the country place of Joshua Carpenter, 
later the residence of Governor Thomas, 
Dr. Graeme, the Dickinsons, the Chevalier 
de la Luzerne, and Judge Tilghman. Rec- 
ollections of the many notable persons who 
had at different times occupied this man- 
sion, and perhaps also of the good cheer 
enjoyed within its halls, suggested Judge 
Peters's witticism. Passing the old house 
one day with a friend, who called his at- 
tention to the fact that the windows were 
being taken out previous to tearing down 
the building, he exclaimed, "Yes, the livers 
are all gone, and now they are taking out 
the lights." 

In the square below stands our most 
revered landmark, Independence Hall, 
precious not only to Philadelphians, but 
to all Americans and to lovers of liberty 
everywhere. 

The artist and engraver have made us 



OLD LANDMARKS. I9I 

familiar with the noble and picturesque 
group of men who signed the Declaration. 
Here in 1787 was gathered another group, 
equally noble and quite as picturesque, — 
soldiers who had taken part in the long 
war, statesmen, governors, eminent jurists, 
and men of affairs, in all the bravery of their 
powdered heads, bag wigs, and velvet suits. 
Robert Morris walks to the State-House 
with General Washington, who is his guest. 
They make a fine appearance on the street, 
and are met with enthusiastic demonstra- 
tions from the people. Mr. Morris is de- 
scribed as a large man, and his portraits 
show us how kindly and earnest was his 
face ; while the President, in his full suit of 
black, wearing his dress sword with inim- 
itable grace, tall, commanding, and digni- 
fied, is always an imposing figure. There 
are lines of care upon his face which prove 
that to have been " the Father of his 
Country" through eight years of war and 
five years of unsettled political and social 
life was no light task. 

As they near the House they are met by 
other delegates, — James Madison, who has 



192 COLONIAL DAVS AND DAMES. 

" the Virginia plan" safely packed away 
in his clever head, or perchance the more 
eloquent Randolph, who is to present it 
upon the floor ; or Rutlcdgc, from South 
Carolina, or John Dickinson, from nearer 
home ; or it may be that the General bonds 
his tall form to hear what Hamilton has to 
say as they enter the hall together, — Alex- 
ander Hamilton, who at seventeen made a 
powerful appeal to the New York mass- 
meeting in '74, who was Washington's 
aide-de-camp in ^yj, and who now shares 
with Madison the honor of leading this 
great Convention. 

Here are George Clymer, Elbridge 
Gerry, Roger Sherman, George Read, 
and many others who belonged to the 
Congress of '76, among them James Wil- 
son, the learned Scotchman, who, while 
declaring that he was not a blind ad- 
mirer of the Constitution, asserted that, 
to his mind, "it was the best form of 
government that had ever been offered 
to the world," which seems to have 
been the opinion of Dr. Franklin. The 
latter, cheerful despite the infirmities of 



OLD LANDMARKS. 193 

age, has, as usual, a little story to tell. 
This time it is about a French lady who 
said to her sister, " I do not know how it 
is, my sister, but I meet with nobody but 
myself who is always in the right." Just 
what this had to do with the Constitution 
docs not appear, but they all laughed at the 
old man's joke, and cheered him heartily 
when he declared that he had finally made 
up his mind that the carving upon the 
back of the Speaker's chair was a " rising 
sun," although he had had serious doubts 
about it in darker days. 

If a painting were to be made of these 
statesmen gathered together in the old 
hall, it would seem incomplete without 
the scholarly and refined face of Francis 
Hopkinson. Although not a delegate to 
the Convention, he contributed much to 
its success by his poems, allegories, and 
satires, carrying in that small head, which 
John Adams described as not bigger than 
a large apple, a vast amount of literary 
and legal lore, and withal no end of quips 
and quirks and witticisms. But the pen 
grows garrulous with reminiscences, from 
I » 17 



194 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

which we turn to hope that the old build- 
ing may ever be preserved, an honored 
memorial, to which may come in all gen- 
erations those who would renew their pa- 
triotism and strengthen their faith in the 
best that belongs to humanity. A shrine 
is this, more sacred than the graves of 
heroes, because this is a monument to 
principles which are even greater than the 
men who fought in their defence. 







cm "Dut^ cStid^e xijr*a vt *«j^ JT^^^r;^ 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY- 
MAKINGS. 

" One did commend me to a wife both fair and young 
That had French, Spanish, and Italian tongue. 
I thanked him kindly and told him I loved none of such. 
For I thought one tongue for a wife too much. 
What ! love ye not the learned ? 
Yes, as my life. 
A learned scholar, but not a learned wife." 

Surely some crabbed bachelor, heavily 
fined for remaining in the single state 
from which no fair lady would help him 

195 



196 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

to escape, had composed this venomous 
doggerel for Ann Wing, aged thirteen, to 
perpetuate with painstaking stitches. How 
glad she must have been to turn from it 
to execute in colored silks the impossible 
roses and trees that illuminate her beauti- 
fully worked sampler ! 

Hannah Head, who was probably as 
fond of bright colors as any other Quaker 
child, inveighs upon her square of canvas 
against those who 

" Court to be decked in rich attire 
With gold spread, that others may admire," 

insisting in all colors of the rainbow that 

" They in whose noble heart true virtue dwells, 
Need not so much adorn their outward shells." 

Poor little girls ! such words seem 
strangely unsuited to your years and ex- 
perience. We can only hope that your 
lives were brighter than they seem to us 
as we look back upon them. This hope 
is encouraged by the fact that Miss Wins- 
low, a regular attendant of the Old South, 
was allowed to take part in an entertain- 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 1 9/ 

ment where there was dancing, and where 
the " treat was nuts, raisins, cakes, wine, 
punch, hot and cold, all in great plenty." 
The publication of the diary of this Boston 
school-girl of 1771 throws a more attrac- 
tive Hght upon child-life in New England, 
and leads us to believe that there were 
others besides Anna Winslow who filled 
their home letters with descriptions of their 
innocent pleasures and girlish vanities, even 
if they, like her, dutifully quoted the text 
and gave their opinions upon the parson's 
discourse. After all, girl hearts beat high 
then as now, and were as quick to respond 
to the touch of joy or love. Courtship 
and marriage came so early in those days 
that the little maids had scarcely finished 
their samplers and folded them away be- 
fore they had to take them out again to 
copy the letters upon the linen for their 
bridal outfits. 

With all the seeming repression of child- 
life, and the great outward deference shown 
to the wishes of parents, there seems to have 
been considerable independence in love- 
affairs among young women in Colonial 
17* 



198 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

days. Even Betty Sewall refused one 
husband of her father's choice, and kept 
another unexceptionable parti waiting a 
year for her answer to his suit ; while, from 
Priscilla Mullins frankly encouraging John 
Alden to speak for himself, to Phcebe 
Harrison refusing to give her cherries to 
any one but the lad for whom they were 
intended, these gentle creatures seem to 
have had decided opinions about their 
partners for life, Phineas Pemberton's 
" Narrative" tells, in his own words, the 
quaint story of his love-making : 

" Phoebe, with her mother as they were going into 
Cheshire, called at my master's shop, but I knew them 
not ; she, being then about nine years of age, said to 
her mother, having got some cherries in her apron, ' I 
have a mind to give one of these young men some cher- 
ries.' Her mother said, ' Then give to both ;' one of 
my fellow apprentices being then by me and on a mar- 
ket day, — I never having seen them before, nor they 
me, that I know of, and altogether strangers to them. 
She said, ' No ; I will but give to one,' and through the 
crowd of people that then stood before the counter, she 
pressed holding out her hand with cherries for me, be- 
fore I was well aware ; and I admired that a child I 
knew not, should offer me such kindness; but on in- 
quiry remembered I had heard her name, and I retali- 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 1 99 

ated her kindness at the same time with a paper of 
brown candy. About two years after that she came 
that way again with her mother who came into the shop 
but she did not ; She only stayed in the street & then 
again I remembered her kindness but saw not her face. 
About two years after that I went to Bolton to get a 
shop, to set up trade there and then saw her again but 
remembered little of what before had happened. After I 
was come there and had settled awhile and took notice 
of her discreet & modest behavior and features & per- 
sonage I then was taken with her; She appeared very 
lovely in my eye tho' then quite young & because of this 
I suppressed my affection for a time. Other things 
in the meanwhile offered on that account to me, but 
more & more love increased in me towards her until I 
could not conceal it. I then remembered the begin- 
nings thereof as already mentioned. Her parents and 
friends were very respectful to it but because of her ten- 
der years it was still delayed until she was of riper age ; 
in which time she was often not well, sometimes from 
home under the doctor's hands & once at London in 
which time many letters passed." 



These letters, which were devoutly re- 
ligious as well as tenderly affectionate, were 
followed by the marriage of the Quaker 
lovers. Soon after, being grievously per- 
secuted for conscience' sake, Phineas and 
Phcebe emigrated to Pennsylvania, where, 
as in Massachusetts, the Pemberton name 



2(X) COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

was soon identified with important work in 
the Provincial government. 

Another Quaker courtship, of much 
later date, was that of Walter Franklin, of 
New York, and Hannah Bowne, of Long 
Island, of which the following record has 
been preserved in the Franklin family : 

" A gentleman riding at his leisure in his chariot 
[about 1774] passed the door of a thrifty farmer on 
Long Island. It was a well to do place, but there was 
nothing to distinguish the house from others in the 
neighborhood, and he would not have thought of it 
again, but at the moment a young and beautiful Quaker 
girl entered the yard to milk the cows that were com- 
ing from the pasture. He saw that she was lovely in 
form and graceful, and scarcely knowing what he did, 
he reined in his horse and asked who lived there. 
Without embarrassment, for the speaker was too well 
dressed and too gentlemanly to excite suspicion, she 
replied, ' My father, Daniel Bowne, wilt thou not alight 
and take tea with him ?' The invitation was accepted 
and when the stranger approached the house he intro- 
duced himself to Daniel Bowne as Walter Franklin. 
' Thou art known to me by reputation,' said Bowne to 
his visitor, 'and I am glad to see thee.' Then they 
talked of matters that each thought would interest the 
other, Franklin not forgetting to praise the cows he 
had seen in the barnyard, but no mention was made of 
the maid who milked them. Presently the door opened 
and the young girl entered to prepare the table and set 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 20I 

out the tea things. She was dressed in the simple garb 
of her people, her hair was carefully smoothed and 
gathered up into a knot, and a linen kerchief covered 
her neck and bosom. ' Hannah,' said her father, * this 
is friend Walter Franklin of New York.' The girl 
blushed deeply when she met the ardent look of the 
stranger, and her embarrassment was none the less when 
she found that no allusion was made to the previous 
meeting. Long they sat around the table in that quiet 
cosy parlor, and when the time to leave had come, the 
guest bade adieu to the farmer and his daughter prom- 
ising ere long to visit them again. The promise was 
faithfully kept, and after three such visits Walter sought 
and won the hand of Hannah, who, as his wife, rode 
with him in his chariot to New York. There she pre- 
sided over his house at the comer of Cherry and Pearl 
Sts.,* and from what is knovim of the establishment 
there were few in the city that surpassed it. Great as 
was the change in her mode of living, Mrs. Franklin 
was quite equal to her new position, for she had been 
taught to cultivate every housewifely virtue, and her 
mind was stored with learning, as was shown in after 
years in the rearing of her children." 

The daughters of this marriage were gay- 
girls who seem to have left Quakerism far 
behind them. Two of them married Clin- 
tons, — De Witt and his brother George, — 

* This handsome old house was the residence of 
President Washington in 1789. 



202 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

while their cousin, Sally Franklin, a great 
belle during the British occupation of New 
York, married Mr. Robinson, of Newport, 
and went there to live. The admiration 
excited in the breasts of French and Eng- 
lish officers by the Quaker beauties of 
Newport has been " sung in song and re- 
hearsed in story," while a portrait of Polly 
Lawton, in the Redwood Library, smiles 
down sweet denial of any evil intent in her 
coquetry. 

Among other charmers were the Rob- 
inson sisters, who made sad havoc with 
the hearts of the British officers in New- 
port. Mrs. Robinson, alarmed by the 
serious attentions of two of these gentle- 
men who were quartered in her house, 
and not being in favor of a foreign alli- 
ance, sent off her fascinating daughters 
upon a visit to their relatives in Narragan- 
sett, forbidding their return until the Brit- 
ish had left the island. Later the Marquis 
de Noailles was quartered in the Robin- 
son house, — a pleasant guest, who so fully 
appreciated the kindness of his hostess 
that after his return to France he sent Mrs. 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 2O3 

Robinson some exquisite Sevres china, 
which was accompanied by a charming 
letter from his lovely young wife. It is 
not difficult to believe in the hospitality of 
this old mansion when we see its great 
fireplace, where, says tradition, two quar- 
relsome women cooked for years upon 
their separate stoves without speaking to 
each other. 

Great simplicity characterized many 
Colonial weddings, but, yielding to the 
sweet and wholesome instinct that has al- 
ways led parents to rejoice and make merry 
over their children's settling for life, the 
Colonists gradually surrounded their wed- 
dings with more ceremony and gayety. In 
families where large fortunes were acquired, 
a handsome trousseau was usually pre- 
pared for the bride. Before the marriage 
of his daughter to Nathaniel Sparhawk, 
Sir William Pepperell wrote to England 
for an outfit which included 

" Silk to make a woman a full suit of clothes, the 
ground to be white padusoy and flowered with all sorts 
of coulers suitable for a young woman — another of 
white watered Taby, and Gold Lace for trimming of it ; 



204 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

twelve yards of Green Padusoy ; thirteen yards of Lace, 
for a woman's head dress, 2 inches wide, as can be 
bought for 13 s. per yard; a handsome Fan, with a 
leather mounting, as good as can be bought for about 
20 shillings ; 2 pair silk shoes, and cloggs a size bigger 
than ye shoe." 

William Pepperell, the father of Mrs. 
Sparhawk, seems to have conducted his 
courtship of Miss Hirst in Oriental fashion, 
making her presents of gold rings, a large 
hoop, and other ornaments. " The fair 
lady," says the family chronicler, "was 
already wooed by her cousin Moody, a 
school-master from York, but the modest 
pretensions of the pedagogue were des- 
tined to make no headway against so for- 
midable a rival as the future baronet, who 
was even then the heir of a fortune, favored 
with engaging manners and the tact which 
fashionable life and political eminence con- 
fer," So the poor school-master wrote vale 
in the diary in which he had transcribed 
the charms of his Dulcinea, and the victo- 
rious Pepperell led Miss Hirst to the altar. 

An old portrait marked " Lady Pepper- 
ell and her sister Miss Royal," represent- 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 20$ 

ing two demure little maidens of thirteen 
and fourteen seated upon a sofa together, 
the elder with a humming-bird poised upon 
one hand as if to proclaim it an American 
painting, attracted the attention of the 
writer, and led her to investigate the family- 
line to learn why there are no Pepperells 
in the New England life of to-day. It 
transpired that William Pepperell, the 
grandson of the victor of Louisburg, who 
married Elizabeth Royal, died without 
heirs. The name thus became extinct in 
America, the family being represented by 
Sparhawks, Huttons, Tylers, Snows, and 
others. Miriam Tyler, a granddaughter of 
Sir William Pepperell, married a certain 
Colonel Williams ; after her death he mar- 
ried, in turn, a Miss Wells, and for his third 
wife a shrewish maid by the name of Dick- 
inson, who treated his children so badly 
that they left home and finally joined 
the Shakers at Lebanon. Of this marital 
experience an epigrammatic friend ob- 
served, — 

" Colonel Williams married his first wife, Miss 
Miriam Tyler, for good sense, and got it ; his second 
i8 



206 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

wife, Miss Wells, for love and beauty, and had it ; and 
his third wife. Aunt Hannah Dickinson, for good quali- 
ties, and got horribly cheated." 

A groom who lost his bride upon the 
steps of the altar was Noahdiah Brainerd. 
Young Samuel Selden, of Hadlyme, Con- 
necticut, so runs the tale, observing a no- 
tice on the door of Chester Meeting-House, 
stating that Noahdiah Brainerd and Deb- 
orah Dudley proposed marriage in that 
house on the following Lord's day, tore 
the notice from the door and substituted 
another, in which the names of Samuel 
Selden, of Hadlyme, and Deborah Dudley 
appeared as proposing marriage upon the 
self-same day. When the wedding-morn- 
ing arrived. Captain Selden came early to 
the meeting-house, armed and equipped 
according to the law, and, observing that 
his notice was undisturbed, took heart of 
grace, and when Mr. Joseph Dudley, his 
wife, and daughter Deborah, appeared, he 
advanced, addressed the latter affection- 
ately, and led her up the aisle to the min- 
ister, who married them according to the 
solemn forms then obtaining. What the 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS, 20/ 

groom-elect, Noahdiah, was about all this 
time we are not informed, but, as the Sel- 
den family history records that Samuel 
took his bride across the river the same 
day, without objection or resistance on 
her part, it certainly looked as if the fair 
Deborah, like the love of the " young 
Lochinvar," was not averse to a change- 
ling groom, while the inscription upon 
the wedding-ring, still preserved in the 
Selden family, — " Beauty is a Fair, but 
Virtue is a Precious Jewel," — shows that 
Samuel fully appreciated the various 
charms of his daringly won bride. The 
strange sequel to this romantic wedding 
is that after many years of wedded life 
and the birth of several children, upon 
the death of her husband, Samuel, Deb- 
orah Selden became the wife of her first 
lover, Noahdiah Brainerd. The query 
very naturally suggests itself. Did she love 
him all the time, was she frightened into 
marrying her masterful lover, Samuel Sel- 
den ? and, equally pertinent in those days 
of much marrying. Did the defrauded 
Noahdiah remain true to his first love all 



ao8 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

those years, or did he marry in the interim 
and find himself a widower thus oppor- 
tunely? 

Somevdiat similar to this Puritan love- 
stor>- is one preserved in the Esling hnnfy 
o£ Philadelphia, although in this latter 
tale tiie bride was the clever strategist, as 
^ipears fincMn the history of the sstsdr. 

Maxy Magdalen Esling was oigaged to 
be married to <Mie Thomas CarroLL and 
according to the chronicle her wedding- 
day was not only fixed, but 

"tbe gaests bad atSaaJtf asspiaHprt to witness die cere- 
iwj; &e wwlifiiig eatataimeaft was spread, snd. ex- 
pease kad not been sfand; aaaag Ae xse, and iar 
Ihose di^s laimiuMt. adaaBOibaff &e a^ile boad, 

cf caiwHr aade hf a &ai wdl-kaovs aitifioery Attr 
Keid. These caadles voe decanied, Md bgr aa B- 
process woe aade to esplode ia a sivacr of 
hiA banakss |ijiuleiJnncs>. Etajtkng was 
'r Sat the ccRaHB^ to 1i^^^ Ae hridal pai^ 
Saddcaif Oe caadks flnsd i^tolfe 
ami. nnilia i of &e coaipnr. Int abea 
ne eaEcdoaeit hadsaisided Ae Inde hadfis^peand. 
Tak^ aliwtiy of the mafiriina, de had a%ped 
anf ftoaa &e tamfmrf, aad aO amfcd as sfe was ia 
iKT laidid imlaMi^had le^ed Ae rear feace of her 
^deer's gar - jcg , azid mst oe tbe cotade one who^ ^te 




WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 2O9 

prized higher than her intended husband, Carroll, a 
waiting lover, who bore what was under the circum- 
stances the very appropriate nanie of Hauck, since he 
had not only swooped down in such an unceremonious 
manner on the company, but had also captured her 
whom we may poetically designate as the dove, though 
practically her conduct bespoke more of the cunning 
of the serpent." 

Some later weddings that brought with 
them a spice of hazard and adventure were 
those of Elisha Boudinot * and Colonel 
William Duer, which took place in New 
Jersey during the Revolution. At the 
marriage of Elisha Boudinot and pretty- 
Kitty Smith, of Elizabethtown, Alexander 
Hamilton, who was then Washington's 
young aide-de-camp, acted as master of 
ceremonies, and, in addition to his other 
duties, was obliged to keep a sharp look- 
out to prevent a surprise from the enemy. 

The marriage of Colonel William Duer 
and Lady Kitty Alexander, a daughter of 
Lord Stirling, was solemnized at the fine 
old Stirling manor-house among the hills 

* Elisha Boudinot was a brother of Elias Boudinot, 
President of Congress, and of Mrs. Richard Stockton, 
the poetess. 

o 18* 



2IO COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

of Basking Ridge. To this wedding, says 
Emeline G. Pierson, in her sketches of old- 
time Jersey weddings, came such aristo- 
cratic families of the State as the Bou- 
dinots, Stocktons, Hetfields, Kennedys, 
Southards, Mortons, Ogdens, Lotts, and 
Clarkes. The manor-house being at the 
time the head-quarters of General Greene, 
and Washington's camp being at Morris- 
town, only eight miles distant, this wed- 
ding was something of a military pageant. 
Lady Kitty was given away by no less a 
personage than the Commander-in-Chief, 
while, in addition to the numerous officers 
among the guests, the house was sur- 
rounded by soldiers, who called for a sight 
of the fair bride, and, when she stepped 
out upon the lawn, greeted her with ring- 
ing cheers and hearty good wishes. 

A dignified New York wedding that be- 
longs to a somewhat later period was that 
of Mr. Peter Augustus Jay and Miss Mary 
R. Clarkson. The groom was a son of 
Chief-Justice Jay and his lovely wife, 
Sarah Livingston, the bride a daughter 
of General Clarkson. Mary Clarkson was 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 211 

evidently a charming girl. Motherless 
from early childhood, she was most care- 
fully trained by her father, over whose 
home she presided until her marriage.* 

After an exchange of letters of congratu- 
lation between the Honorable John Jay 
and General Clarkson upon the engage- 
ment of their children, which was evidently 
a source of gratification to both families, 
the wedding of Miss Clarkson and Mr. 
Jay, whose course of true love ran so 
smooth, was solemnized at the Clarkson 
house on Pearl Street. 

" The company assembled about half-past seven, and 
were received in the drawing-room, which was on the 

* That this exemplary parent was not lacking in a 
sense of humor we gather from a letter written to his 
daughter Elizabeth, while upon a visit to Mrs. Thomas 
Newbold, in Philadelphia. Miss Clarkson had evi- 
dently enjoyed a serenade from an admirer who was 
unknown to her father, as General Clarkson writes, — 

" Here, I can tell you, we sleep in peace and quiet- 
ness. No one disturbs us at night under our windows, 
excepting now and then Aunt Katy's cats, which occa- 
sionally give us a serenade. As I have informed you 
of the party that have annoyed me, I shall expect to be 
told in your next who they are that have lately dis- 
turbed you." 



212 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

north side of the house on the second floor, its three 
windows looking out upon Pearl Street. Among the 
guests, says an eye-witness, were Governor Jay, Miss 
Anne Brown, the Rutherfurds, Bayards, Le Roys, Van 
Homes, Munroes, Wallaces, and others. Bishop Moore 
arrived a quarter before eight, and at eight the bride, 
followed by her bridesmaids, entered the room and 
was received by the groom and his attendants. The 
bridesmaids were the Misses Ann Jay, Helen Ruther- 
furd, Anna Maria Clarkson, Cornelia Le Roy, and Susan 
and Catherine Bayard. The groomsmen were Robert 
Watts, Jr., John Cox Morris, Dominick Lynch, George 
Wechman, Benjamin Ledyard, and B. Woolsey Rog- 
ers. The bride was dressed in white silk covered with 
white crape or gauze. Pearls adorned her hair, en- 
circled her neck, and were clasped around her arms. 
Her maids wore white muslin, made in the style of the 
Empire, and embroidered in front, and each carried a 
fan, a present from the bride. ' Drab flesh-colored' 
small clothes, flesh-colored silk stockings, white vests, 
and coats varying in color to suit the taste of the wearer 
made up the attire of the gentlemen, which corresponded 
with that of the groom, whose coat was of a light color. 
The ceremony was then performed by the Bishop, and 
Mrs. Jay received the congratulations of her friends. A 
great variety of refreshments were then handed round 
on trays by colored waiters, and in the dining-room 
below, upon a side table, a collation was spread, of 
which the elderly people partook. The groomsmen 
drank a bottle of wine together before separating, and 
the evening's festivities were over at twelve o'clock. 
On the next day Mr. and Mrs. Jay went on a visit to Ed- 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 2I3 

gerston, on the Passaic, a little above Belleville, the 
residence of the Hon. John Rutherfurd. On Saturday 
Mrs. Rutherfurd entertained the bridal party at a break- 
fast, and on Monday they returned to the city. Mr. Jay 
received his friends on the mornings of the succeeding 
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and Mrs. Jay's re- 
ceptions were in the evenings of Thursday, Friday and 
Saturday." 

How dignified and leisurely this sounds ! 
Mr. Jay receiving his friends upon three 
mornings of the week, Mrs. Jay hers in 
the evening, with no end of breakfasts 
and dinners between. These prolonged 
nuptial festivities were undoubtedly a sur- 
vival of a custom prevalent in some of the 
Colonies of keeping open house for sev- 
eral days after a wedding. Watson says 
that weddings in old Philadelphia, even 
among Friends, were " very expensive and 
harassing to the wedded." The bride's 
home was filled with company to dine, 
the same guests usually staying to tea 
and supper, while for two days punch was 
served in great profusion. Kissing the 
bride and drinking punch seem to have 
been the leading features of these enter- 
tainments. For two days the groom's 



214 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

friends would call at his house and take 
punch, and all would kiss the bride, after 
which for a week or more the bride and 
groom would give large tea-parties at their 
home every evening, the bridesmaids and 
groomsmen being always in attendance. 
Sometimes a coaching trip was taken to 
Lancaster, the bridesmaids and grooms- 
men still in attendance. The coach would 
stop at the General Wayne or the Buck 
Tavern, on the Lancaster pike, where 
breakfasts would be served to the party. 
This more sociable manner of conducting 
a wedding trip frequently led to engage- 
ments between the attendants, thus pro- 
moting and extending happiness. From 
Philadelphia and New York longer wed- 
ding journeys were occasionally made to 
Newport and Providence, many marriages 
having taken place between the young 
people of these places. Such marriages 
were usually among Friends, and were the 
results of the Yearly Meetings held in one 
or other of the larger towns. 

Among the Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, 
receptions, called " infairs," were held after 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 2I5 

the wedding, and were often prolonged 
through several days. In country places 
or small towns weddings proved delight- 
ful occasions for gathering a neigh- 
borhood together. Family coaches or 
stages brought numbers of guests to the 
ceremony, and many stayed overnight. 
There was gossiping, feasting, and punch- 
drinking galore for the older people, and 
for the young all the pleasant exchange 
of smiles and glances and gay nothings 
that would eventually lead to other wed- 
dings in the same circle. 

A Harrisburg antiquary says of old- 
time weddings, — 



" They were not the brief, soulless affairs of to-day. 
Guests sometimes arrived before breakfast and remained 
until the ' wee sma' hours ' of night, and not unfre- 
quently Aurora herself escorted them home. The 
hours of daylight were spent in plays full of life and 
spirit, such as ' Shove the Brogan,' ' The Meat's a-Bum- 
ing,' etc., interspersed with breathing spells for refresh- 
ments, when wit and humor had free scope, and such 
out-door sports as ' Prisoner's Base' and ' Jump the 
Bullies.' (The latter was purely a masculine game 
which offered the • young fellows' an excellent oppor- 
tunity to display their agility.) And when night let fall 



2l6 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

her sable curtain, the halls resounded with instrumental 
music and dancing and the voice of song." 



Although we do not hear as much of 
"bride stealing" in the Middle Colonies 
as in New England, the groom was not 
allowed to quit the ranks of the single 
without a parting salute from his com- 
panions. A custom prevailed in Southern 
Pennsylvania, and among the Scotch-Irish 
in Virginia, of barring the progress of the 
coach of the newly married pair by ropes 
or other obstacles, which were not removed 
until the groom paid toll in the form of a 
bottle of wine or of drinks to his perse- 
cutors. These and other customs, which 
seem to us so rude, do not appear to have 
seriously interfered with matrimony, and 
the brides were as fair and as modest as 
those of to-day, while the grooms were 
equally handsome, and how much more 
picturesque ! 

An old Philadelphian who has lived 
long enough to recall the early years of 
this century describes a handsome, im- 
posing house on High Street, between 



WEDDINGS AND MERRY-MAKINGS. 21/ 

Seventh and Eighth, and tells of the 
pleasure she found in looking from the 
windows of her Quaker home opposite 
upon the gay doings in this more worldly 
mansion. Miss Beck, the young lady of 
the house, has remained a lovely picture 
in her memory, and she says that she can 
see her now as she used to come down the 
marble steps in her dainty slippers with 
their ribbons crossed and tied around her 
trim ankles, her long, flowing crape scarf 
about her shoulders, her high scoop hat 
with its many feathers and large veil grace- 
fully festooned over its brim, the clustering 
curls upon her forehead, and her beautiful, 
bright face beneath. To see her enter her 
carriage was always a delight ; but the day 
of days in the memory of this imaginative 
child was when the lady whom she 
admired so much came down the steps as 
a bride in her travelling-dress of rich silk, 
attended by the groom, who was brave in 
satin, velvet, and shining buckles, while 
her two brothers walked behind her, each 
holding in a leash his favorite greyhound. 
When the steps of the great black chariot 
K 19 



2l8 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

with its yellow wheels were let down and 
the bride stepped in and the groom took 
his place beside her, the moment was in- 
tense, thrilling ; the last act in the drama 
of love. Are there any such weddings 
now? Are there any brides like those 
who to the children living opposite were 
veritable fairy princesses from Andersen's 
tales ? 





f fie last cf ^^^^ of Ju,M>ng5 of the 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 

The search after the truth concerning a 
personage or a place mentioned in fiction 
may be as fruitless in practical results as 
the pursuit of the pot of gold at the end 
of the rainbow; yet how fascinating is 
such a quest, presupposing, as it does, the 
power of those who enter upon it to create 
for themselves a world of fancy, a fool's 
paradise, or whatever you may choose to 
call it, which is in itself a rare and delight- 

219 



220 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

ful faculty ! That this power has not been 
destroyed by the serious business of living 
in the nineteenth century appears from the 
fact that hundreds of pilgrims still follow 
Dickens through the London haunts of 
his characters, or visit old Salem and wan- 
der through its historic streets in search 
of the " House of the Seven Gables." This 
latter quest is carried on with fresh interest 
every year, although Mr. Hawthorne has 
carefully explained in the preface to his 
romance that his characters " have a great 
deal more to do with the clouds overhead 
than with any portion of the actual soil of 
the County of Essex," and that *' he trusts 
not to be considered as unpardonably of- 
fending by laying out a street that infringes 
upon nobody's private rights, and appro- 
priating a lot of land which has no visible 
owner, and building a house of materials 
long in use for constructing castles in the 
air." 

An illustration of this trait of humanity, 
for which no appropriate name suggests 
itself, is afforded by the interest shown 
within a few years in a controversy re- 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 221 

garding the Philadelphia meeting-place of 
the Acadian lovers in " Evangeline." Mr. 
Longfellow described the almshouse as it 
appeared in the plague-stricken town in 
1793. In view of the fact that the poet 
visited Philadelphia thirty years after the 
events narrated, and doubtless saw the 
two almshouses then standing, it is not 
improbable that he so confused them in 
his own mind that he was able to form an 
harmonious picture from the more salient 
features of the two. This explanation 
would not, however, satisfy the insatiate 
delver after truth. Mr. Frank A. Burr 
opened the discussion by stating au- 
thoritatively that the scene of the meet- 
ing of Evangeline and Gabriel was the 
almshouse on Spruce Street, between 
Tenth and Eleventh, and their burial- 
place the yard of old Christ Church, 
where he speaks of visiting the grave of 
the lovers and pushing aside the ivy that 
had grown over their imaginary tombstone. 
A local antiquary, Mr. Esling, who had 
given much attention to the subject in con- 
nection with the Church of St. Joseph's, 
19* 



222 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

Stepped in promptly and furnished excel- 
lent arguments in favor of the Friends' 
Almshouse on Willing's Alley as the place 
where the lovers met, quoting a letter from 
Mr. Longfellow himself, in which, after 
thanking Mr. Esling for some photographs 
taken just before the building was de- 
stroyed, he says, — * 

" I cannot quite make out from the photographs 
whether this is the place I had in mind when writing 
the last scene of the poem. I only remember brick 
walls, an enclosure, and large trees ; a building I saw 
many years ago when walking the streets of your city, 
and whose memory came back to me as I wrote. Be 
this as it may, I thank you cordially for your kindness 
and highly appreciate this act of good will on your part. 
Is there not still standing in Philadelphia, in some re- 
mote street, an almshouse or hospital with brick walls 
and a garden with trees ? 

" If so, I may possibly see once more the very place 
I had in memory. If not, then I shall think that this 

* The last buildings of the Friends' Almshouse were 
not removed until the spring of 1876. Another institu- 
tion that has been brought into the controversy is the 
Friends' " bettering-house," near Second and Pine 
Streets. This is out of the question, however, as it was 
not used as an almshouse or hospital after 1767, and 
could not have been visited as such by Mr. Longfellow 
in 1824. 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 223 

demolished cottage was a part of the place described in 
the last scene of the poem." 

The almshouse on Spruce Street and the 
quaint little building on Walnut Place hav- 
ing been destroyed prior to Mr. Longfel- 
low's visit to Philadelphia in 1876, the only 
individual who could speak authoritatively 
upon the subject was unable to decide the 
matter. Consequently, the readers of the 
poem are perfectly free to form their own 
opinions and locate for themselves the 
pathetic scene when Evangeline, after her 
long quest in search of her lover, enters 
the hospital ward with flowers in her hands, 
the bloom of the morning in her face, to 
see Gabriel lying there, " motionless, sense- 
less, dying." The Quaker Almshouse, 
covered with ivy and trumpet-flowers, and 
surrounded by its beds of herbs and flow- 
ers, certainly furnished a more picturesque 
setting for the last and most dramatic scene 
in the poem than did the Spruce Street 
building ; yet Mr. Longfellow's description 
seems to apply better to the more spacious 
grounds of the latter, as he speaks of en- 
tering through the gates, of wandering 



224 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

through the grounds and sitting under the 
large trees with the poor, listening to their 
stories of the life within. These expres- 
sions were used in after-years in speaking 
to Mr. Burr of his visit to Philadelphia in 
1824, when the almshouse and its sur- 
roundings so impressed themselves upon 
his mind that they recurred to him later 
when he wrote his poem, and led him to 
place the final scene 

" In that delightful land which is washed by the Dela- 
ware's waters." 

Dr. Charles K. Mills, in his history of 
the Philadelphia Almshouse, says that there 
is no question in his mind that this was 
the spot visited by Mr. Longfellow in 
1824. 

" As it was in 1755 that the French Acadians of Grand 
Pr6 — nineteen hundred peaceful, happy souls — were 
dispossessed of their homes and began their wander- 
ings, the event idealized by the poet can probably be 
referred to the epidemic of yellow fever in 1793, and 
to the almshouse building at Tenth and Spruce Streets, 
first occupied in 1767." 

As there is no proof to bring forward, 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 225 

the poet's mind naturally being much more 
intent upon the romantic story of the Aca- 
dians and the broader outlines of his poem 
than upon definite localities, the surround- 
ings of the last scene in the drama are still 
left in the nebulous region of uncertainty, 
which is the most appropriate setting for a 
romance. With regard to the burial-place 
of the lovers there can be no question, for, 
as Mr. Esling clearly demonstrates, the 
only spot that answers to Mr. Longfellow's 
description is " the little church down the 
alley." 

" Side by side, in their nameless grave, the lovers are 
sleeping. 

Under the humble walls of the little Catholic church- 
yard, 

In the heart of the city, they lie." 

So in the Catholic church of St. Joseph's, 
set like a mosaic in the midst of dingy 
alleys and high buildings, we leave the dear, 
constant old lovers to sleep their last sleep. 
Little did they dream that their obscure 
love-story would lead so many clever peo- 
ple to talk about them, nor would it, had 
P 



226 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

not the hand of the poet touched it with 
the magic of his genius. 

Two heroines who lived, not in the misty 
realm of fiction, but in the clear, bright 
light of day, were Flora Macdonald and 
Rebecca Gratz. The former, from the 
moment that she appears upon the pages 
of history with her heroic offer of service — 
" Since I am to die, and can die but once, 
I am perfectly willing to put my life in 
jeopardy to save his Royal Highness" — 
to the hour of her death, when she was still 
loyal to the memory of Prince Charlie, 
presents a character of singular frankness, 
courage, and devotion. After the escape 
of the prince who seemed so unworthy 
of the lives risked in his defence. Flora 
Macdonald was taken prisoner and carried 
to London. When it transpired that the 
Scotch maiden was not a Jacobite, but 
simply a devoted child of monarchy, she 
was courted and feted by the nobility, and 
even granted an audience by George II. 
" How dared you to succor the enemy of 
my crown and kingdom ?" was the dis- 
concerting query of the king, to which 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 22/ 

Flora replied, without embarrassment, " It 
was no more than I would have done for 
your Majesty, had you been in like situ- 
ation." 

During her sojourn in London, where 
her life was a round of festivities, Flora's 
portrait was painted for Commodore Smith, 
whose sloop had conveyed her to the 
metropolis as a prisoner. Later she left 
London in a coach-and-four, in company 
with Malcolm Macleod, a fellow-conspira- 
tor, and five years after married one of her 
own clansmen, Allan Macdonald, the young 
Laird of Kingsburgh, whose mother had 
aided in the escape of the prince. Flora 
became mistress of the mansion in which 
Charles Edward had passed his first night 
on the Isle of Skye. Here, in 1773, Mrs. 
Macdonald entertained Dr. Johnson and 
Mr. Boswell, the Highland hostess being 
described by the latter as " a little woman, 
of a genteel appearance and uncommonly 
mild and well-bred." Later, Mr. Boswell 
records that he slept at the Macdonalds' 
in the same room with Dr. Johnson, and 
had the pleasure of seeing the great lexi- 



228 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES, 

cographer ensconced in the bed in which 
Prince Charles Edward lay after the battle 
of Culloden, when thirty thousand pounds 
were offered as a reward for apprehending 
him. " To see Dr. Samuel Johnson lying 
in that bed in the Isle of Skye, in the 
house of Miss Flora Macdonald (for so I 
shall call her), struck me with such a group 
of ideas as it is not easy for words to de- 
scribe, as they passed through my mind. 
He [Dr. Johnson] smiled and said, ' I have 
no ambitious thoughts in it' " At break- 
fast the next morning Mrs. Macdonald re- 
lated her adventures, to the great satisfac- 
tion of Dr. Johnson, and of Mr. Boswell, 
who of course made full notes of the con- 
versation. 

In 1774 the Macdonalds sailed from 
Cambelton, Kintyre, for Wilmington, North 
Carolina. Hither Flora's fame had pre- 
ceded her and she was received with open 
arms. A grand ball was given in her honor 
in Wilmington, and upon her approach 
to Cross Creek (now Fayetteville) she 
was greeted with strains of the pibroch 
and the martial airs of her native land. 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 229 

For some time she remained among her 
friends at Cross Creek, and the site of her 
home is still shown, although the house is 
now in ruins. Later the Macdonalds re- 
moved to Cameron's Hill in Cumberland 
County, and afterwards to Anson County. 
During the early years of the Revolu- 
tion Mrs. Macdonald and her family — many 
of the clan having come to America — ex- 
erted great influence over the Highlanders 
in North Carolina. This influence was 
naturally in favor of the crown, and was 
of great service to Martin, the Tory gov- 
ernor of the State. At the battle of 
Moore's Creek, in February, 1776, a num- 
ber of loyalists led by Donald Macdonald 
were defeated and routed. After the bat- 
tle the victorious Americans found General 
Macdonald sitting alone on a stump near 
his tent, waving in the air the parchment 
scroll containing his commission, which he 
delivered into their hands. Over eight 
hundred common soldiers were made pris- 
oners, disarmed, and discharged, while a 
number of officers were taken to the jail in 
Halifax. Among these were Allan Mac- 



230 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

donald, the husband of Flora, and one 
or more of her sons. Although she had 
taken no active part in the conflict, she ex- 
erted a powerful influence over her clans- 
men, urging them forward to fight for their 
King. Allan Macdonald, " on considera- 
tion of his candor and his being in a low 
state of health," was released on parole, 
and he and his wife and daughter returned 
to Scotland either in 1779, or in 1782, ac- 
counts varying as to the date. The sloop 
in which the Macdonalds embarked upon 
their homeward voyage was pursued by a 
French vessel, and was in imminent danger 
of capture, when Flora ascended the 
quarter-deck, and, nothing daunted, en- 
couraged the men to renewed efforts. The 
sight of this woman, so courageous in the 
face of danger and suffering, raised the 
spirits of the crew, and the French were 
finally beaten and Flora safely landed 
upon her native soil, where she passed 
the remainder of her days. She is said 
to have remarked more than once, with 
charming candor and good humor, ** I 
have hazarded my life both for the house 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 23 1 

of Stuart and the house of Hanover, and I 
do not see that I am a great gainer by it." 
A heroine of eminence associated with 
the land of Flora Macdonald, although she 
never set foot upon its picturesque shores, 
was Rebecca Gratz, of Philadelphia. Men 
and women still in the prime of life can 
recall the face and form of an elderly- 
woman, slight and elegant, with gray curls 
and dark eyes, who was pointed out to 
them, in their childhood, as the heroine 
of " Ivanhoe." This was a marvel and a 
wonder past understanding, and ever after, 
as Miss Gratz passed along the street, she 
was looked upon by the children who had 
heard this tale with a feeling of awe and 
reverence, as one who had come fresh and 
fair from the land of romance. Hence- 
forth, in their minds, the face and figure of 
Rebecca Gratz stood forth from the en- 
chanting background of barbaric splendor 
and chivalric sentiment against which the 
novelist has placed the beautiful Jewess, 
they never doubting that she had passed 
through the exciting scenes of the tourna- 
ment at Ashby, the lonely castle of Front- 



232 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

de-Boeuf, and even the final rescue from a 
violent death by the " Disinherited Knight." 
Long after these early impressions were 
made, it was explained how this Philadel- 
phia woman had come to be the heroine 
of " Ivanhoe." Washington Irving was a 
friend of the Gratz family, and often visited 
them in their old mansion, where he was 
sure of finding a warm welcome and a 
room to " roost in," as he expressed it. In 
addition to this family friendship, Rebecca 
Gratz was the intimate friend of Matilda 
Hoffman, of New York, to whom Wash- 
ington Irving was engaged and to whom 
he was devotedly attached. The sad story 
of that early love and loss is well known. 
Matilda Hoffman, fair and lovely, worthy 
such a heart as that of Irving, fell into a 
rapid decline and died at eighteen, leaving 
what the world seldom sees, — an absolutely 
inconsolable lover. Rebecca Gratz nursed 
her friend through her last illness and held 
her in her arms when she died. After 
the death of Matilda Hoffman, the two 
survivors were drawn together in a friend- 
ship that lasted as long as they both lived. 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE, 233 

Miss Gratz is described in her youth as 
a woman of distinguished beauty. Her 
eyes were large and dark, her figure grace- 
ful, and her manners winning and attrac- 
tive. In addition to these charms, she was 
a woman of more than ordinary cultivation 
and force of character. 

During Washington Irving's visit to 
Great Britain in 1817 he met most of the 
literati of that brilliant period, among them 
the poet Campbell, who, well aware of 
Walter Scott's high estimate of Irving's 
genius, gave him a letter of introduction 
to the Northern minstrel. Irving, in one 
of his letters, tells of the informal and cor- 
dial reception given him by the poet, who 
came limping down to the gate to meet 
him and made him spend several days at 
Abbotsford, during which time Scott, most 
delightful of cicerones, visited with him 
Dryburgh Abbey, and pointed out to him 
from a mountain-top the Braes of Yarrow, 
Ettrick's stream winding down to throw 
itself into Tweed, and many another fa- 
mous spot. After the day's wanderings 
they read and talked together, and it was 
20* 



234 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

probably upon one of these evenings at 
Abbotsford that the older poet drew Irving 
to speak of his friends at home, and among 
them of Rebecca Gratz. He described 
her wonderful beauty, related the story of 
her firm adherence to her religious faith 
under the most trying circumstances, and 
particularly illustrated her loveliness of 
character and zealous philanthropy. Scott, 
who was deeply interested and impressed, 
conceived the plan of embodying in a 
romance the noble character and senti- 
ments of this high-souled Jewess. He 
was then at work upon " Rob Roy," but 
was already revolving in his active mind 
the plot of " Ivanhoe," and was desirous 
of introducing a Jewish female character 
into the story. 

We can readily understand how Scott's 
imagination was fired by Irving's glowing 
description of his beautiful and gifted friend, 
and why it is that " Rebecca the Jewess" 
stands out for all time as one of the finest 
creations of that master-hand. Lockhart 
tells us that Scott received letters from 
some of the readers of " Ivanhoe" cen- 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 235 

suring him for bestowing the hand of 
Rowena, rather than that of Rebecca, upon 
the brave knight of Ivanhoe, showing that 
there was in this character " that touch 
of nature that makes the whole world 
kin." Laidlaw, to whom a large portion 
of " Ivanhoe" was dictated, relates that 
he became so interested in the story of 
Rebecca that he exclaimed as he wrote, 
"That is fine, Mr. Scott! Get on! get 
on !" To which the author, well pleased, 
replied, " Ay, Willie ; but recollect I have 
to make the story. I shall make some- 
thing of my Rebecca." " Ivanhoe" 
was published in December, 1 8 19, and Sir 
Walter sent a copy to Irving and a letter 
accompanying it, in which he said, " How 
do you like your Rebecca? Does the 
Rebecca I have pictured compare with 
the pattern given ?" 

Miss Gratz knew the source of the char- 
acter of Rebecca, but, " shrinking as she 
did from any publicity, would seldom ac- 
knowledge the fact, and, when pressed upon 
the subject, would deftly evade it by a 
change of topic." Belonging to a family 



236 COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. 

of influence and culture, she naturally met 
men of superior position and abilities. 
Among those who surrounded her it is 
said that there was one man who loved 
Rebecca Gratz, who was worthy of her, and 
who gained her affection. The difference 
in religious belief, however, proved an in- 
surmountable barrier to a union, this latter- 
day heroine being as loyal to the faith of 
her fathers as was Scott's Rebecca. Greatly 
admired by a large circle of friends in 
Philadelphia, at Saratoga Springs, where 
she spent her summers, and at her brother's 
home in Kentucky, where Henry Clay 
paid her marked attention. Miss Gratz 
seems to have put aside all thoughts of 
love and marriage, and to have dedicated 
her best energies to works of benevolence 
and philanthropy. There was, says her 
biographer, Gratz Van Rensselaer, scarce 
a charitable institution of the day in her 
native city that did not have the name of 
Rebecca Gratz inscribed upon its records 
as an active officer or as an adviser and 
benefactress, Gentiles as well as Jews being 
the recipients of her unfailing kindness 



LEGEND AND ROMANCE. 



237 



and sympathy. In view of this long life 
of devoted service for humanity of one 
who, in her youth, seemed fitted pre-emi- 
nently for a brilliant social career, we are 
reminded of the words of Rebecca in her 
final interview with Wilfred's bride : 

" Among our own people, since the time of Abraham 
downwards, have been women who have devoted their 
thoughts to Heaven and their actions to works of kind- 
ness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and 
relieving the distressed. Among these will Rebecca be 
numbered." 

It seems as if the novelist had not only 
portrayed the character of Rebecca Gratz 
in that of his favorite heroine, but had also 
forecast the future of her prototype in these 
words of " Rebecca the Jewess." 




INDEX. 



Adams, John, 165, 174, 185, 

193- 
Adams, Mrs. John, 128, 144, 

165. 
Adams, John Quincy, 14. 
Agnew, General James, 177, 

178. 
Alden, John, 198. 
Alexander, Lady Kitty, 209, 

210. 
Allen, Judge, 52. 
Allen, Priscilla, 74. 
Ambler, Jacqueline, 151. 
Ambler, Mary, 148. 
Ampthill, 81. 
Andri, Major John, 175, 176, 

179. 
Andros, Governor Edmund, 55. 
Armstrong, General John, 171. 
Arnold, Benedict, 172. 
Arnold, Margaret Shippen, 

172. 
Ash, Colonel James, 147, 148. 
Ash, John Morgan, 147, 148. 

B. 

Bacon, Mary Ann, 70. 
Baker, William S., 155. 
Bank Meeting-Hoase, 74. 
Barker, Penelope, 127. 



Bartram, John, 174. 
Bayard, Catharine, 212. 
Bayard, Susan, 212. 
Baylor, Mrs. George W., 167, 

168. 
Beatty, Rev. Charles, 48, 49. 
Beck, Miss, 217. 
Becket, Hamilton, 140. 
Beekman, 169. 
Beekman, Margaret, 170. 
Bennett, Joseph, 54, 93. 
Berkeley, Governor William, 85. 
Biddle, 172. 
Biddle, Clement, 97. 
Biddle, Mrs. Clement, 97, 98. 
Bingham, Mrs. William, 172. 
Black, William, 18, 19, 97, 135, 

173- 
Blackburn, Jonathan B., 90 
Blair, 47. 

Blake, Dorothy, 84, iii. 
Blodget, Mrs. Samuel, 187. 
Bogart, Rev. Mr., 166. 
Bond, Williamina, i86. 
Boudinot, Annis, 113. (See 

Mrs. Richard Stockton.) 
Boudinot, Elias, 209. 
Boudinot, Elisha, 209. 
Bowne, Daniel, 200, 201. 
Bowne, Hannah, 200, 201. 
Braddock, General, 49. 

239 



240 



INDEX. 



Bradford, 20. 

Bradstreet, Anne, 53, 63, loi- 

III. 
Bradstreet, Charles, 54. 
Bradstreet, Governor Simon, 

S3, 63, 107, 108. 
Brainerd, Noahdiah, 206, 207. 
Brandon, 81. 
Bray, John, 34. 
Bray, Margery, 34. 
Breck, Robert, 136. 
Breck, Mrs. Robert, 135, 136. 
Breck, Samuel, 136, 172, 188. 
Brent, Margaret, 80. 
Brent, Mary, 80. 
Brett, Mary, 74. 
Broglie, Prince de, 189. 
Buck Tavern, 214. 
Burr, Aaron, 166, 167, 168. 
Burras, Anne, 80. 
Burroughs, Thomas, 39, 40. 
Burwell, Colonel Nathaniel, 

167, 168. 
Burwell, Rebecca, 151. 
Bushfield. 149. 
Bynner, Edwin L., 157. 
Byrd, Colonel William, 85, 86, 

87, 88, 137. 
Byrd, Evelyn, iii. 
Byrd, Mrs. William, 88. 
Byrd, William, Jr., 85. 



Cadwalader, Frances, 186, 187 

(Lady Erskine). 
Cadwalader, General John, 

145, 185-187. 
Callender, James Henry, 186. 
Calvert, 21. 
Calvert, Governor Leonard, 80. 



Campbell, Douglas, 23. 
Campbell, Helen, 107, 109. 
Carpenter, Joshua, 190. 
Carpenter, Samuel, 46. 
Carrington, Mrs. Edward, 148. 
Carroll, Charles, 84. 
Carroll, Dr. Charles, 84. 
Carroll, Thomas, 208. 
Carter Hall, Virginia, 167. 
Carter, " King," 35. 
Cary, Archibald, 81. 
Cary, Mary, 162. 
Chalkley Hall, 32, 183, 184. 
Chalkley, Rebecca, 183 (Mrs. 

Abel James). 
Chalkley, Thomas, 32, 45, 183. 
Chamberlaine, 84. 
Chandler, Mrs., 15. 
Channing, in. 
Charles Edward, escape of, 

226, 227. 
Cheeseman, Major, 8s. 
Chew, Benjamin, 175, 176. 
Chew, Peggy, 17s, 176. 
Chilton, Mary, 62. 
Chiswell, Mrs., 87. 
Christ Church, Alexandria, 154. 
Christ Church, Philadelphia, 

29, 120, IS3, 221. 
Churches, Ancient, 29, 156. 
Clarke, Richard, 91. 
Clarkes, of New Jersey, 210. 
Clarkson, Anna Maria, 212. 
Clarkson, General Matthew, 

210, 211. 
Clarkson, Mary R., 210-213. 
Clay, Henry, 236. 
Claypoole, James, 16. 
Clifford, Mrs. Thomas, 142. 
Clifford, Thomas, 142. 



INDEX. 



241 



Clinton, De Witt, 201. 

Clinton, George, 201. 

Cliveden, 175. 

Clymer, George, 192. 

Coale, Dr. Samuel, 145. 

Coates, 67. 

Cob Neck, 84. 

Coleman, Rebecca, 17, 19. 

Collins House, 35. 

Copley, Hon. Sophia C, 140. 

Copley, John Singleton, 90, 140, 

141. 
Copley, Mrs. John S., 91, 141. 
Corwen [Curwen], 53. 
Cotton, Rev. John, loi. 
Crooked Billet Wharf, 67. 
Cruger, 20. 
Culpeper, 21. 
Custis, Nellie, 94, 153, 159. 



Dana, in. 
Darrach, Lydia, 127. 
Deane, Silas, 97, 145, 185. 
De Lancey, 20, 169. 
De Peyster, 20. 
Derby, Elias Hasket, 35. 
De Vries, Margaret, 77, 78. 
De Vries, Rudolphus, 77. 
Dexter, Timothy, 35. 
Dickinson, John, 192. 
Diggs, Robert, 116. 
Dillard, Richard, 127. 
D'Obleville, Lawrence, 54. 
Dowes, Madam, 39. 
Duchateau, Louis, 90. 
Duche, Rev. Jacob, 146. 
Dudley, Anne, 58, (See Anne 

Brads treet.) 
Dudley, Deborah, 206, 207. I 

L 5^ 21 



Dudley, Governor Thomas, 15, 

100, 107. 
Dudley, Joseph, 206. 
Duer, Colonel William, 209, 

210. 
Duncan, Mrs. Margaret, 76. 
Dunton, John, 22, 88, 92, 133- 

137- 
Durdin, Fanny, 148. 
Durdin, Richard, 189. 

E. 

Earle, Alice Morse, 75. 
Edenton Tea-Party, 127. 
Endicott, 20, 100. 
Endicott, Governor, 54. 
Erskine, David Montagu, 186. 
Erskine, Hon. Mary, 186. 
Esling, Charles H. A., 221, 222, 

225- 

Esling, Mary Magdalen, 208. 

Esmonde, Frances, 189. (Dur- 
din ; Lewis.) 

Evans, Rev. Evan, 26. 

Evans, Rev. Nathaniel, 120- 
124. 

Eve, Sarah, 96, 142, 147, 148. 



Fairfax, Anne, 159. 

Fairfax, Colonel George, 161. 

Fairfax, Hon. William, 159, 160. 

Fairfax, Lord, 160, 161. 

Fair Hill, 50, 183. 

Fay, Lewis, 90. 

Fergusson, Hugh, 117. 

Fergusson, Mrs., 113-124. 

Ferree, John, 75. 

Ferree, Madame Mary, 75, 76. 

Finley, Samuel, 47. 



242 



INDEX. 



Fisher, 51. 

Fisher, Joshua Francis, 119. 

Fisher, Miers, 97. 

Flower de Hundred, 81. 

Flower, Enoch, 46. 

Folger, Peter, 131. 

Forrest, Mistress, 80. 

Fouike, Dr., 45. 

Foulke House, 179. 

Francis, 21. 

Francis, Anne, in. 

Frankland, Sir Henry, 157. 

Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 41, 44, 

48, 49. 51, 86, 95, 114, 131, 

153. 192. 
Franklin, Mrs. Benjamin, 50, 

131-134- 
Franklin, Governor William, 

134- 
Franklin, Josiah, 131. 
Franklin, Mrs. Josiah, 130-132. 
Franklin, Mrs. William, 134. 
Franklin, Sarah, 51, 95, 134, 

212. 
Franklin, Walter, 200. 
Friends' Almshouses, 221-224. 
Friends' Meeting-Houses, 29- 

74. 
Funerals in old New York, 170. 

G. 
Gage, General Thomas, 35. 
Gardner, Mistress, 53. 
Gates, General Horatio, 144. 
General Wayne Tavern, 214. 
Germanna, 85, 87. 
Gerrj", Elbridge, 192. 
Gibbons, Mr., 34. 
Gill, Anna, 82, 83. 
Gill, Benjamin, 82. 



Goldsborough, 84. 
Gookin, Governor, 26. 
Governor's House, 25. 
Graeme, Elizabeth, 119. (See 

Mrs. Fergusson.) 
Graeme Park, 119, 121. 
Graeme, Thomas, M.D., 116, 

119, 121, 190. 

Gratz, Rebecca, 226, 231-237. 
Green, Mrs. Samuel, 136. 
Greene, Mrs. Gardiner, 91. 
Greens, The (Associators), 145. 
Greenway Court, 161. 
Griffitts, Hannah, 113. 
Grymes, Lucy, 161, 162. 
Grj-mes, Susanna, 167. 
Guest, Alice, 67. 
Guest, the Misses, 142. 
Gimston Hall, 81. 

H. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 165, 192, 
209. 

Hamilton, Andrew, 18, 172. 
Hamilton, Andrew, 2d, 172. 
Hamor, Raphe, 80. 
Hanck, 209. 
Hancock, John, 128. 
Hancock, Mrs. John, 128. 
Hard, Elizabeth, 67, 69. 
Hard, William, 67, 69. 
Hardenbrook, Margaret, 77. 

(ist, De Vries ; 2d, Philipse.) 
Harrison, Phoebe, 198. (Mrs. 

Phineas Pemberton.) 
Harvard College founded, 14. 
Hayward, 84. 
Head, Esther, 70. 
Head, Hannah, 196. 
Head, John, 69, 71. 



INDEX. 



243 



Head, Martha, 70. 

Head, Mary, 70. 

Head, Rebecca, 69, 70. 

Henry, John, 137. 

Henry, Mrs. John, 137. (Sarah 

Syme.) 
Henry, Patrick, 137, 138. 
Hermitage, The, 81. 
Hetfields of New Jersey, 210. 
Higginson, Rev. Francis, 11, 

103. 
Hills, The, 172. 
Hoffman, Matilda, 232. 
Hollyday, 84. 
Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, 

III. 
Hooper House, 36. 
Hooper, Robert, 35. 
Hopkins, Johns, 70. 
Hopkinson, Francis, 139, 146, 

'93- 
Hopkinson, Joseph, 142. 
Hopkinson, Mary, 142. (See 

Mrs. John Morgan ) 
Hopkinson, Mrs. Thomas, 139, 

141-143. 
Horsmanden, Mary, 85. 
Hoskins, Mary, 127. 
House of the Seven Gables, 

220. 
Howard, General John E., 

176. 
Howe, General Sir William, 

187, 188. 
Hull, Captain Joseph, 75. 
Humphrey, John, 63. 
Humphrey, Susan, 63. 
Hunt, Leigh, 140. 
Hunt, Mrs. Isaac, 140. 
Hunter, Andrew, 116. 



Hutchinson, Anne, 99, 100, loi, 

107. 
Hutton, 203. 



Independence Hall, 190-194. 
Irving, Washington, 163, 232- 

235- 
Izard, 21. 

J- 

James, Abel, 32, 72. 183. 
James, Mrs. Abel, 183, 184. 
Jasper, Margaret, 23. 
Jay, Hon John, 210, 211, 2H. 
Jay, Peter Augustus, 210-213. 
Jefferson, Martha, 95. 
Jefferson, Peter, 130. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 94, 95, 151, 

165, 174. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 227, 228. 
Johnson, Governor, 117, 118. 
Johnson, Isaac, 63, 64. 
Johnson, Lady Arbella, 63, 102. 
Johnston, Governor of North 

Carolina, 127. 
Johnston, Isabella, 127. 
Jones, Owen, 50. 
Jumel House, 164, 165, 166. 
Jumel, Madame, 166, 167, 168. 
Jumel, Stephen, 166. 
Junto, 133. 

K. 

Keith, Anne, 116. 
Keith, Lady Anne, 116. 
Keith, Rev. George, 47. 
Keith, Sir William, 116-119. 
Kennedys of New Jersey, 210. 
King, Elizabeth, 127. 



244 



INDEX, 



King's Chapel, 158. 
Kip, Jacobus, 169. 
Kirkbride, Colonel, 143. 
Knight, Elizabeth, 40. 
Knight, Madam, 36, 37, 40. 
Knox, General Henry, 165. 
Knyphausen, General, 165. 
Kuhn, Dr., 172. 



Ladd, John, 30. 
Lafayette, Marquis de, 158. 
Lansdowne, 172. 
Lawrence, Thomas, 18. 
Lawton, Polly, 202. 
Laydon, John, 80. 
Ledyard, Benjamin, 212. 
Lee, General Charles, 112, 144. 
Lee, General Henry, 162. 
Leete, Governor, 22. 
Lennox, Major, 179. 
Le Roy, Cornelia, 212. 
Letitia Court, 24, 45. 
Lewis, Judge William, 189. 
Lewis, Lawrence, 159. 
Lincoln, Earl of, 63. 
Livingston, Alida, 171. 
Livingston, Chancellor, 170. 
Livingston, Colonel Henry B., 

171. 
Livingston, Edward, 171. 
Livingston, Janet, 171. 
Livingston, Judge Robert R., 

170, 171. 
Livingston, Lieutenant-Colonel 

John, 40. 
Livingston, Margaret Beek- 

man, 170. 
Livingston, Mrs. John, 40. 
Livingston, Philip, 169. 



Livingston, Sarah, 210. 

Lloyd, 20, 84. 

Lloyd, Elizabeth, of Wye 

House, 186. 
Lloyd, Governor Thomas, 47. 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 27, 55. 
Log College, 47, 48. 
Logan, James, 26, 47, 174. 
Logan MSS., 138. 
Logan, Mrs. George, 113, 179. 
Longfellow, Henry W , 93, 

221-225. 
Lott, of New Jersey, 210. 
Lynch, Dominick, 212. 
Lynde, Judge Benjamin, 58, 

103 • 
Lynde, Lydia, 58. 

M. 

McCall, Archibald, 187. 
Macdonald, Allan, 227-230. 
Macdonald, Flora, 226-231. 
Macdonald, General Donald, 

229. 
Mcllvaine, Mrs,, 52. 
McPherson, 172. 
Madison, James, 191, 192. 
Main Street, Germantown, 174, 

177. 
Makin, Thomas, 47. 
Markoe, Captain Abraham, 

146. 
Markoe, Peggy, 172, 173. 
Marshall, Chief-Justice John, 

148. 
Martin, Governor, of North 

Carolina, 229. 
Masons of Virginia, 81. 
Masters, Polly, 188. 
Mather, Dr. Samuel, 41. 



INDEX. 



245 



Mather, Rev. Cotton, 63, 64, 

65, 89, 154- 
Mather, Rev. Increase, 154. 
Meeting-place of the lovers in 

" Evangeline," 221-225. 
Meng, Melchior, 177. 
Mercer, Captain George, 155. 
Merry Mount, 54. 
Meschianza, 175. 
Mifflin, General Thomas, 143, 

144. 
Mifflin, Mrs. Thomas, 143, 144. 
Mills, Dr. Charles K., 224. 
Milnor, 84. 
Montgomery, 20. 
Montgomery, General Richard, 

171. 
Montgomery, Jemima, 186, 

187. 
Moore, Bishop, 212. 
Morgan, Colonel George, 145. 
Morgan, Dr. John, 142-144. 
Morgan, Mrs. John, 142-147. 
Morris, Anthony, 75. 
Morris, Colonel Roger, 163-166. 
Morris, Deborah, 67. 
Morris, John Cox, 212. 
Morris, Robert, 71, 72, 188, 189. 
Morris, Mrs. Robert, 189. 
Morris, Sarah, 74. 
Morton, John, 72. 
Morton, Thomas, 54. 
MuUins, Priscilla, 62, 198. 
Munroe, 212. 

N. 

Neale, Archbishop, 84. 
Neale, Captain James, 82, 83, 

84. 
Neale, Henrietta Maria, 83. 



Neale, Mrs. James (Anna Gill), 

82-84. 
Newbold, Mrs. Thomas, 211. 
Nice, Mrs. Anthony, 128. 
Nicholson, Governor Francis, 

151. 
Noailles, Marquis de, 202. 
Norris, Deborah, 179. (Mrs. 

George Logan.) 
Norris, Isaac, 25, 113, 172, 183. 
Norris, Mrs. Isaac, 25. 

O. 

O'Carroll, Ely, 84. 

Ogden, 210. 

Old North Church, 155, 158. 

Old South Church, 155, 196. 

Otis, James, iii. 

Otis, Mrs. Samuel AUeyne, 141. 

Owen, Robert, 73. 

Owen's Cave, 67. 

P. 

Page, Governor John, 151, 167. 
Page, Thomas Nelson, 95. 
Patroons, 169. 
Peabody House, 35. 
Peale, Charles Willson, 91. 
Pemberton, Mrs. Israel, 188. 
Pemberton, Mrs. James, 138. 
Pemberton, Mrs. Phineas, 198, 

199. 
Pemberton, Philadelphia, 70. 
Pemberton, Phineas, 198, 199. 
Penington, 20. 
Penn, John, 172. 
Penn, Richard, 188. 
Penn, William, 16, 23, a6, 30, 

76, 100, 117. 
Pennsbury, 24, 25. 



246 



INDEX. 



Pennypacker, Samuel W., 24. 
Pepperell, Lady, 204, 205. 
Pepperell, Sir William, 34, 

203-20S. 
Pepperell, William, ist, 34, 
Perry, Michael, 136. 
Peters, Judge Richard, 172, 190. 
Peters, Mary Brientnal, 172. 
Peters, Rev. Richard, 18, 174. 
Peters, William, 52, 172. 
Philadelphia City Troop, 146, 
Philipse, Frederick, 77. 
Philipse Manor, 162. 
Philipse, Mary, 78, 162-164. 
Philipse, Mrs. Frederick, 77, 78. 
Phillips, Wendell, iii. 
Phoenix, Mrs. Daniel, 147. 
Physick, Philip Syng, M.D., 

190. 
Pierson, Emeline G. , 210. 
Pitkin, Elizabeth, 148. 
Plowden, Sir Edward, 80. 
Powel, 52. 

Prentice, Widow, 37. 
Preston, Mrs., 30. 
Princeton College, foundation 

of, 48. 
Pringle, 21. 

Putnam, General Israel, 144. 
Pynchon, 20. 
Pynchon, Dr. Charles, 58. 



Quarry, Colonel Robert, 26. 



Randolph, Edmund, 193. 
Randolph, Jane, 130. 
Randolph, John, 81. 
Randolph, Mary, 81, iii. 



Randolph, Thomas Mann, Jr., 
81. 

Ravenel, 21. 

Rebecca, heroine of "Ivan- 
hoe," 231-237. 

Redwood Library, 202. 

Reed, Deborah, 132. (Mrs. 
Benjamin Franklin.) 

Reed, George, 192. 

Richards, Madam, 53, 

Richardson, Joseph, 74. 

Ringgold, General Samuel, 186. 

Ringgold, Mrs. Samuel, 186. 

Rittenhouse, David, 174. 

Roanoke, 8t. 

Robin, Abb^, 156. 

Robinson House, Newport, 202. 

Robinson, Mrs. Beverly, 163. 

Robinson, Rev. William, 48. 

Robinson, William T., 202. 

Rodney, 20. 

Rogers, B. Woolsey, 212. 

Roosevelt, 169. 

Rosewell, 167. 

Royal, Elizabeth, 204, 205. 

Rush, Betsey, 147. 

Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 116, 119, 
174- 

Rush, Madam, 166. 

Rutherfurd, Helen, 212. 

Rutledge, John, 192. 



Saltonstall, Rev. Gurden, 37. 
Saltonstall, Sir Robert, 63. 
Sandys, George, 11 1. 
Sandys, Sir Edwin, 80. 
Saxton, 137. 
Schuyler, 20, 169. 
Schuyler, Mrs. Philip, 127. 



INDEX. 



247 



Scott, Sir Walter, 233-237. 
Selden, Samuel, 206, 207. 
Sewall, Betty, 198. 
Sewall, Judge Samuel, 53, 73^ 

89, 103. 
Sewall, Mrs. Samuel, 75. 
Sharswood, Hon. George, 71. 
Sherman, Roger, 192. 
Sherwood, Grace, 126. 
Shewell, Thomas, 139, 140. 
Shippen, Edward, ist, 24. 
Shirley, 81. 
Shirley, Governor William, 155, 

157- 
Shirley, Mrs. William, 157. 
Shrimpton, Samuel, 22. 
Silk Stocking Company, 185. 
Skelton, Martha, 151.- 
Skipwith, 21. 
Smibert, John, 90. 
Smith, Thomas, 74. 
Snow family, of Massachusetts, 

205. 
Southards of New Jersey, 210. 
Sparhawk, Nathaniel, 203. 
Sparhawk, William Pepperell, 

205. 
Spotswood, Governor Alexan- 
der, 85-87. 
Spotswood, Lady, 85-87. 
St. Joseph's Church, 221, 225. 
St. Paul's Church, New York, 

134, 154. 
St. Peter's Church, Philadel- 
phia, 146. 
Stenton, 174. 

Stewart, Mrs. William, 88, 92. 
Stockton, Hon. Richard, 114, 

"5- 
Stockton, Julia, 116. 



Stockton, Mary, 116. 
Stockton, Mrs. Richard, 113- 

116, 209. 
Stoddert, Major Benjamin, 180, 

181, 182. 
Stone, William L., 170. 
Story, Thomas, 16. 
Strettell, Robert, 173. 
Stuart, Gilbert, 91. 
Stuyvesant, Governor, 39. 168. 
Surriage, Agnes, 157, 158. 
Swanwick, John, 92. 
Swift, Miss, 92. 



Tautphoeus, Baroness, 186. 
Tennent, Rev. Wilham, 47. 
Tennent, William, 47. 
Thomas, Gabriel, 18, 28, 52, 74. 
Thomas, Grace, 74. 
Tilghman, 84. 
Tilghman, Judge, 190. 
Tilly, Mr., 180, 181, 182. 
Townsend, Richard, 16. 
Trinity Chiu-ch, New York, 

154- 
Trumbull, John, 91. 
Turner, Robert, 16, 24. 
Tyler, 205. 



Valentine, Sarah, 127. 

Van Cortlandt, Stephen, 169. 

Van Home, 212. 

Van Rensselaer, 169. 

Van Rensselaer, Gratz, 236. 

Vaux, George, 70., 

Vernon, 177. 

Vernon, Admiral, 159. 

Vesey, William, 154. 



248 



INDEX. 



Vow Church, 76. 

W. 

Wakefield, 174. 

Ward, Mrs. Sophie Howard, 
176. 

Ward, Nathaniel, 43, 57. 

Ward, Townsend, 187. 

Warren, James, iii. 

Warren, Mercy, in, 112, 113. 

Washington, Corbin, 149. 

Washington, Mrs. Corbin, 150. 

Washington, General, 78, 97, 98, 
112, 144, 153-155, 158-164, 
176, 191, 192. 

Washington, New York resi- 
dence of, 201. 

Washington, Philadelphia resi- 
dence of, 188. 

Washington, Lawrence, 159, 
160. 

Washington, Martha, 94, 153, 
189. 

Washington, Mary, 130, 131, 
x6o, 163. 

Washington, MiUy, 149. 

Watts, Robert, Jr., 21a. 

Welcome, the, 16. 

Wenchman, George, 212. 

Went worth, 20. 

Wentworth, Lady, 141. 

West, Benjamin, 91, 139-141. 

West, Mrs. Benjamin, 139-141. 

Westover, 81, 85, 86. 

Wetherill, 183. 

Wharton, Charles, 185. 



Wharton, Mrs., of Boston, 53. 

Wharton, Mrs. Thomas, 74. 

Wharton, Thomas, 74. 

White, Bishop William, 153. 

Whitefield, Rev. George, 93. 

Wigglesworth, Michael, 105. 

Wilderness, The, 149. 

Willing, 51. 

Willing, Thomas, 52. 

Wilson, James, 192. 

Wing, Ann, 196. 

Winslow, 20. 

Winslow, Anna Green, 196, 
197. 

Winthrop, Governor John, 11, 

65, 100. 
Winthrop, Governor of Con- 
necticut, 37. 
Winthrop, Henry, 102. 
Wistar, Dr. Casper, 174. 
Wister House, 177-179. 
Wister, John, 177. 
Wister, Sally, 179, 180. 
Wolcott, Roger, 22. 
Woodlands, 172, 174. 
Wright, Susanna, 113, 
Wyanoke, 8i, 
Wye House, 81. 
Wynne, Dr. Thomas, 17. 



Yonkers, derivation of name, 
162. 

Z. 
Zenger case, 172. 
Zinzendorf, Count, 177, 



THE END. 



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